Conditional titles for visuals and conditional URLs

This is a massive change of direction for Power BI, smuggled in as a solution to a simple problem.  It's worth reading this article because it gives a good insight into the direction Power BI is taking.

The problem solved by conditional titles and URLs

If you want to make the title for a visual make reference to the choices you've made in a slicer, up to now you've had to put the title in a separate card:

Here the title in the middle is in a separate card visual, and doesn't automatically have the same width as the bottom table.

You've also been unable to make an action button go to a dynamic URL:

Up to now, the URL assigned to an action button has been fixed (so it can't, for example, reference the region chosen in the slicer).

Dynamic properties - first create the necessary measures

To make the title and URL properties dynamic, you first need to add one or more measures to a table (I've created a new measures table, and added my measures to that):

The two new measures created for this example (see below for the formulae for each).

Here's what the ChosenRegion measure looks like:

And here's what the ChosenRegionId measure looks like:

Note that the measures won't show the region name or region id selected if you select more than one region at a time, so you'll need to set the region slicer to be single-select only:

Use the new facility rolled out last month to prevent a user selecting more than one region at a time in the slicer.

Setting conditional titles

Having done the hard work, here's how to make the title for a visual into an expression:

Right-click in the Title text property and choose Conditional formatting (even though it isn't formatting at all - see my rant below).

You can then choose to show the results of the measure in your title:

If you're wondering what the other options are apart from Field value, the answer is that there aren't any! Not yet, anyway.

Yeah!  We have a title whose text will change according to which region you have selected:

The title reflects the slicer choice (or that made in any other filter, such as clicking on a region name in a chart or table).

Here's what the title now looks like:

To see the expression used is you have to right-click again on the property.

Setting conditional URLs

Conditional URLs work in the same way.  First create an action button:

A modest action button.

Make this of type Web URL, and then right-click on the Web URL property:

As for a visual title, right-click to assign a measure to the title.

Choose the measure you've created:

Here I've chosen my ChosenRegionId measure, the formula for which is shown above.

And here's what you now get when you click on the button with (for example) the South-West region number 7 selected in the slicer:

The URL reflects the region chosen (well, after translating the URL into English).

The future for Power BI

Here's what Microsoft say:

So expect to see the ability in future months to make the font size, colour, border and every other property of a visual into an expression.  To give you an idea of where Power BI is headed, here's a screen-shot from SQL Server Reporting Services, which does this elegantly:

Virtually every property can be set to be an expression in SSRS.

My objections to this new approach

The idea behind this is great - being able to make every property adapt to the data being displayed in a report.  However, why have Microsoft called it formatting?

This has got nothing to do with formatting!

Instead, I'd have liked to see a little tool appearing to the right of any property whose value can be set to be an expression, as in SSRS:

Another screen-shot from SSRS, showing three properties each of which can be set to an expression.

Microsoft, are you listening?  And can I have commission if you go with my suggestion?