What if you provided a way for the end user to select the type of labels they want (from None to All and everything in between). They can select the lables which suits their requirements and even bookmark their selection for subsequent visits. Wouldnt that be great ? In this blog post we will discuss on how to do this in Power BI.

Lets start by creating a small multiple of sales across countries. It is filtered to one calendar year. I chose the small multiple visual as you can see how to implement the solution for multiple line charts at once. With a bit of formatting it looks like this

This chart has no labels. We will also create a new table which will be a disconnected table. It will look like this with the correct ordering.

We will then define three measures which will go into the chart above. The first measure is this

Sales Label Measure High =
VAR SelLabels =
    SELECTEDVALUE ( Labels[Labels] )
VAR MaxValue =
    MAXX (
        ALL ( ‘Calendar'[ShortMonthName], ‘Calendar'[MonthNumberOfYear] ),
        [Total Sales]
    )
RETURN
    SWITCH (
        SelLabels,
        “High and Low”, IF ( [Total Sales] = MaxValue, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        “First, Last, High, Low”, IF ( [Total Sales] = MaxValue, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        BLANK ()
    )

This will return [Total Sales] when the user selects “High and Low” or “First, Last, High, Loww” in the selection and when the [Total Sales] is equal to the Maximum value in the range (Jan – Dec) else it gives blanks.

The next measure is the same as above except it checks the condition of [Total Sales] is equal to the minimum values in the range (Jan – Dec)

We could have combined these two measures but we want to apply a different colour to the markets for the High and Low data points which will see later. Hence we have defined them separately

Sales Label Measure Low =
VAR SelLabels =
    SELECTEDVALUE ( Labels[Labels] )
VAR MinValue =
    MINX (
        ALL ( ‘Calendar'[ShortMonthName], ‘Calendar'[MonthNumberOfYear] ),
        [Total Sales]
    )
RETURN
    SWITCH (
        SelLabels,
        “High and Low”, IF ( [Total Sales] = MinValue, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        “First, Last, High, Low”, IF ( [Total Sales] = MinValue, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        BLANK ()
    )

We wil define one final measure

Sales Label Measure First Last =
VAR SelLabels =
    SELECTEDVALUE ( Labels[Labels] )
VAR SelMonth =
    SELECTEDVALUE ( ‘Calendar'[ShortMonthName] )
RETURN
    SWITCH (
        SelLabels,
        “All”, [Total Sales],
        “First and Last”,
            IF ( SelMonth = “Jan” || SelMonth = “Dec”, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        “First, Last, High, Low”,
            IF ( SelMonth = “Jan” || SelMonth = “Dec”, [Total Sales], BLANK () ),
        BLANK ()
    )

This measure returns [Total Sales] when a user selects “All”. It also returns [Total Sales] when a user selects “First and Last”, “First, Last, High, Low” in the selection and when the selected month is either “Jan” or “Dec”

Now we place these measures in the small multiple visual so that it looks like this

Next is where the magic happens, in the formatting pane under Date Colours, Date Labels and Shapes. Here is a short video which goes through all the steps.

Finally we place the Labels colulm from the Labels table in a slicer and start interacting with the report