How to Connect Two Visuals in Power BI

Building a Power BI report with a few charts is easy, but making those charts talk to each other is what turns a static page into a dynamic, interactive dashboard. You want to be able to click on a bar in one chart and instantly see how it affects the data in another. This article will show you exactly how to connect visuals in Power BI, explaining the difference between filtering and highlighting, and giving you full control over how your dashboard behaves.

Why Connecting Visuals is a Power BI Superpower

Connecting visuals is the foundation of data exploration in Power BI. Instead of creating dozens of separate, highly-specific charts, you can build a high-level summary and allow users (including yourself) to discover insights by interacting with it. When you click on a data point on one visual - like a specific country on a map - other visuals on the page can instantly react.

Think of it as a conversation between your charts. One visual asks a question (your click), and the others answer it by updating to show only the relevant data. This process is driven by two main types of interactions:

• Cross-Filtering: This removes data that is not related to your selection. For example, if you click on "USA" in a sales-by-country chart, a related chart showing product sales will update to show only the sales figures for products sold in the USA.
• Cross-Highlighting: This keeps all the original data visible but dims everything that is not related to your selection. The part of the data relevant to your selection remains highlighted. This is useful for comparing a specific segment to the whole - like seeing how much "USA" sales contribute to the total global sales.

By default, Power BI enables these interactions automatically, but knowing how to control them is what will elevate your reporting skills.

How Visuals Interact by Default

The best part about Power BI is that this interactive functionality works right out of the box. You don't need any special settings to get started. Let's walk through a quick example to see it in action.

Imagine you have a simple dataset with sales information, including order dates, countries, and sales amounts. On your Power BI report canvas, you build two basic visuals:

1. A Bar Chart showing Total Sales by Country.
2. A Line Chart showing Total Sales by Month.

Your report canvas might look something like this:

(Imagine a simple dashboard with a bar chart on the left and a line chart on the right)

Now, simply click on one of the bars in the "Total Sales by Country" chart - let's pick Canada. Notice what happens instantly to the line chart:

The line chart automatically updates using cross-highlighting. You can still see the trend for total global sales (the dimmed part of the line), but the sales coming specifically from Canada are now highlighted. This is fantastic for seeing how a specific segment contributes to the overall trend.

Power BI determines which visuals interact based on the relationships in your data model. As long as your tables are correctly related, the interactivity just works.

Taking Control: How to Edit Visual Interactions

The default behavior is great, but there are many times you'll want to change or even disable it. For instance, maybe you want clicking a country to completely filter the line chart, removing all other data instead of just highlighting. Or maybe you have a KPI card for "Total Global Sales" that you never want to change, regardless of what's clicked.

This is where the Edit Interactions feature comes in. It allows you to define exactly how visuals respond to clicks from other visuals.

How to Access and Use the Edit Interactions Menu

Follow these steps to customize the connections between your visuals:

1. Select the source visual. This is the chart that you will be clicking on. In our example, click the "Total Sales by Country" bar chart to select it.
2. Navigate to the Format tab on the Power BI ribbon at the top of the screen.
3. Click on the Edit interactions button.

Once you click it, you’ll notice small icons appearing on the top right corner of all the other visuals on your report page. These little icons are your control panel.

You’ll typically see three options on each visual:

• Funnel Icon (Filter): Change the interaction to cross-filtering. It will completely filter the data in this visual based on your selection in the source visual.
• Chart Icon (Highlight): Set the interaction to cross-highlighting. This is often the default for charts like bar and line charts.
• Circle with a Line ("None"): Disable the interaction completely. The visual will not change at all when the source visual is clicked.

Let’s apply this to our example. With the "Total Sales by Country" bar chart still selected and Edit Interactions active:

Changing Highlighting to Filtering

Hover over the line chart. You'll see the three icons show up. The Highlight icon will likely be selected by default. Click the Funnel (Filter) icon instead.

Now, deselect the bar chart and click on the "Canada" bar again. The line chart will instantly change. Instead of highlighting Canada's portion of the total sales, it redraws the line to show only the sales from Canada. The context of global sales is gone, giving you a focused view of Canadian performance.

Disabling an Interaction

Let's add a Card visual that shows the overall "Total Sales" amount for all countries. We never want this card to change, because it's meant to be a high-level summary.

1. Select the "Total Sales by Country" bar chart again.
2. Click "Edit interactions" in the Format tab.
3. On the new Card visual you just added, click the "None" icon (the circle with a line through it).

Now, no matter which country you click on the bar chart, the big number on your "Total Sales" card will remain unchanged. You’ve successfully insulated it from a filter it doesn't need.

Practical Use Cases and Best Practices

Knowing how to control these interactions lets you build intuitive and powerful reports. Here are a few common scenarios where you might customize the settings.

Scenario 1: Regional Sales Dashboard

• Your Goal: Analyze performance in a specific region.
• Visuals: A Map of sales by state, a Bar Chart for sales by product, and a Table with branch manager details.
• Setup:

Scenario 2: Marketing Campaign Analysis

• Your Goal: Compare a marketing channel's performance against the overall trend.
• Visuals: A Pie Chart of leads by channel (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Ads, Social Media) and a Line Chart showing leads over the last 90 days.
• Setup:

When to Disable Interactions: The KPI Rule

A good rule of thumb is to disable interactions for any visual that serves as a high-level, "big picture" number. These are often presented in Card visuals at the top of a report:

• Total Revenue
• Total Customers
• Overall Conversion Rate

Filtering these would defeat their purpose, which is to provide a constant summary of business health, regardless of what data subset you are currently exploring.

Final Thoughts

Making your visuals interactive is a fundamental step in building dynamic dashboards that do more than just display numbers. By moving beyond the default settings and using the "Edit Interactions" menu, you can deliberately guide your users' analytical path, switching between highlighting for comparison and filtering for deep dives.

Mastering features like visual interactions in Power BI can be incredibly powerful, but it often involves clicking through menus and can take time to configure just right. At Graphed, we decided to streamline this whole process. We built a tool that lets you connect all your marketing and sales data sources in seconds and create a real-time dashboard just by describing what you want in plain English. Instead of dealing with interactions, you can simply ask, "compare ad spend vs revenue for the last month," and we build the dynamic dashboard for you on the spot.