Bookmarks Development and Testing

Tableau, Power BI, OBIEE, Cognos, Qlikview, Looker, Micro Strategy, and other developing BI Visualization technologies have pushed business intelligence reporting to the next level in recent years. We mostly employed Excel and Web pages for reporting in the early years of this decade. At such a stage, the functionality and deployment options are limited.

In this new era of BI reporting visualization tools, including Tableau and Power BI, are investigating new possibilities of visualization, broadening the reach of management reporting and analysis to many levels.

In the process of empowering and including many web-based functionalities also with the low code environment in Power BI, bookmarks play an important role to enable many attractive and user-friendly functionalities.

Bookmarks are one of the most powerful features in Power BI. Bookmarks capture the state of the Report Page with Filters and Slicers state, visual state( visibility of the Visuals selected in the selection pane), sorting applied in Visuals, Focus, or Spotlight Mode too.

What is the Data option checked in the Bookmarks?

Data option in the Bookmarks enabled by default and it captures the data applied to the Filters, Slicers, or any other visuals on the page of the report.

How to uncheck the data option in Bookmark?

Click on the three dots beside the bookmarks you can see data, display, Current Page, and All visuals options checked

Data tips: When the bookmarks are applied to a few visuals and filters on the same page then the visuals get filtered from one bookmark to another. To avoid this behavior the bookmarks should be updated with the data unchecked.

How Do ‘All Visuals’ and ‘Selected Visuals’ Work in Bookmarks for a Power BI Report?

While applying the bookmark in a report by default ‘All Visuals’ is selected because the bookmark applied should apply to all the visuals on the page. 

Example:

if a report has an option to show the ‘Last Refresh Date’ which is the MAX(Date_table[Posted_Date]) and there should be a Reset Filters option to be applied on the page to reset all the filters applied for a better User experience. 

Here, the Reset Filters are created and applied with the Button Actions associated with the Bookmark. The Bookmark which is updated at the default state of the Filters but there are some more visuals that do not need to be captured at that state. 

In the above Scenario, All Visuals should be avoided and we should select the Selected Visuals only. 

How do the Current Page option work in Bookmarks for a Power BI Report?

By default Bookmarks are updated to capture the state of the current page but if it is unchecked to capture the change on another page too.

The current Page option is a very unique feature to enable the Bookmark applied to another page which may be hidden or open which will eventually change the next page with the selection etc.

Magic Combination of Power BI:

Buttons, Bookmarks, and Selection pane are the magic combination that enables many features in the Power BI Reports. Buttons, Image, and Shape have six options to apply the action.

Button names can be modified and stored for four different states like 

1. Default State – Text assigned to the default state will be always visible.
2. On Hoover- Text applied to Hoover state will be visible only on mouse hover
3. On Press – If the Button is clicked the text applied on the press is visible
4. Disabled –  Text assigned to this will be visible at Disabled state

 Available actions: 

1. Back
2. Bookmark
3. Page Navigation
4. Drill Through
5. Q&A
6. Web URL

1.Back – Back action is a powerful option that can be used to come back to the same page after navigating to any page.

2.Bookmark: Linking of a created bookmark in the action to a button will apply the bookmarks when we click the button.

3.Page Navigation: Page Navigation action applied to the button navigates to another page or to the given function. Navigating to the given page is straightforward and the using function to navigate is also a good feature.

4.Drill Through – Drill through feature can be applied through this action

5.Q&A – Q&A option can be enabled with this button click action for a better user experience like a button with a name Queries can be used for this action.

6.Web URL – a given Web URL can be used for the external site navigation or an internal function can be used to enable it in the provided column.

Bookmarks Slicer Panel: 

Creating a dynamic Slicer Pane in power BI Reports :

Step 1: Insert an image or button or shape for the ON Action

Step 2: Select a shape to fix the filter within

Step 3 Fix the filters in the shape

Step 4: Select the visuals in the selection pane and open the ‘On button’ and open the ‘Off button” 

Creating forms  and Sales funnel forms with Bookmarks:

With the help of Bookmark features, a successful Sales funnel form for user requirements can be created with Low Code in Power BI reports. With the beautiful functionality of the Current Page option in Bookmarks, we can achieve many use cases which only are possible till now with different WordPress or Web applications or Forms in coding environments.

Let’s discuss the Forms and Sales Funnel creation for user requirements in Power BI reports in detail in the next section.

Maintenance and testing of Bookmarks:

Bookmarks maintenance and testing become a tedious task after the creation of multiples of Bookmarks on each page in the report. 

Common issues at  Bookmarks maintenance and testing:

1. In the process of development, if the team decides to change the button or the shapes attached to the bookmarks, the bookmarks assigned behind that will be idle and create confusion later in maintenance.
2. In the regression testing Bookmark, testing takes time and needs to workaround in the reports and pages.
3. Buttons are difficult to check whether the bookmark action applied to it and works as expected.
4. Bookmark options when applied with data or filters need to be tested for which filters it has applied. Bookmarks applied on selected visuals need to be carefully checked for which selection it is applied to.

Bookmark testing :

Bookmark testing is not a straightforward task. The following  steps should be followed:

1. To test the Bookmark state, the button or image or the shape which has been assigned with Bookmark has to be tested whether the action to the same has been applied in the Power BI format actions.
2. The action may be on but the bookmark might not be assigned or not properly assigned.
3. If the bookmark is assigned in the action to the button then the bookmark state has to be played and tested.
4. Some visuals, forms, buttons, and images in the selected pane may need to be deleted as of a result of bookmark development and revisions.
5. Hidden slicers in a selected form have an impact on the data presented in this report. If the data displayed in a table contains 1000s of entries, and if Slicers are applied to it, data presentation errors may arise on each visual.

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