Enable Self Help Overlays for Power BI Report Viewers

We can all use a little self help when it comes to Power BI Reports. I often need help with visualizations, formulas, or even our data sources themselves. A little help can go a long way! However, this post is not about that.

As a report creator, how often do you get asked about details around your visualizations? The questions I most frequently receive are focused on definitions of terms, how a metric is calculated, or how a particular visualization is filtered. In fairness, our report consumers do not live inside of our heads. Therefore, they do not know what we were thinking when we designed our reports. However, a little design change in your report can make all the difference. By adding a self help panel, we can eliminate these questions once and for all!

Preparing for self help

To get started, we need to take a screenshot of our report. I will use SnagIt to capture the report canvas only. If you do not have SnagIt or similar tool, you can easily use the Snipping Tool app inside of Windows. SnagIt allows me to be precise with my selection of the report canvas.

Once, I have my screenshot, I will open PowerPoint. I know, it seems crazy, but hang with me on this! I will create a new blank presentation, insert a blank slide, and paste my report screenshot on it.

With our canvas in place, it is time to work some magic in PowerPoint!

Create self help overlay objects

Our first step is to add a shape on top of our screenshot. First, go to the insert ribbon and expand the insert shape menu. Next, select the rectangle shape and cover your entire screenshot. Do not worry that we cannot see the screenshot as we will fix that next.

Next, right click on the shape and select format shape. From there, expand the fill menu and change the color to black. Next, adjust the transparency to a level where we can see the canvas clearly, but realize there is something in front of it. In this scenario, 85% seems to be right for this report. Next, you can make adjustments to the border of the shape under the line section. This is a personal preference with building out self help, but I usually leave it enabled.

With our overlay in place, it is time to add our self help comments. Go back to the insert ribbon, expand shapes, and select one of the callout boxes at the bottom.

Keep adding callouts until you are satisfied with your overlay. I recommend erring on the side of too many callouts. However, make sure you still see the report canvas!

With our overlay designed, it is time to add it to our Power BI Report!

Insert self help overlay into you Power BI Report

The first thing we must do is delete the old screenshot from the slide. Right click on your overlay shape and send it to back. Once you have completed that, you can delete the screenshot from the slide.

Self help overlay objects with no screenshot in PowerPoint

Next, we must save our self help objects as an image. Use Control + A to select all objects and Control + G to put them into a single group. After that, we right click on the overlay group and select save as picture. Save this picture to your device so you can access it in Power BI.

Next, head back to Power BI, open the insert ribbon, select image, and insert our saved picture. Then, expand the image so it covers the entire report canvas. You will note two things. First, the image is transparent, so we do not hide the report canvas. Second, you will notice that the self help overlay does not reach the edges of the canvas. We can fix that by going to the general section of the format pane, expanding properties, and set padding for all sides to zero.

Now that this has been inserted, we just need to add a few bookmarks to make it appear when we want it to be visible!

Expose self help overlay with bookmarks

Now that we have our overlay in place, it is time to hide it. To accomplish this task, we will use bookmarks. I have already written extensively about how to leverage bookmarks in a previous post. If you are not sure how to leverage them, please use that link to learn more. In this article, I am just going to show you how I quickly configure them so the self help overlay will appear and disappear when desired.

I have already added two bookmarks – one to open and one to close the self help overlay. I will simply configure my bookmark to only update the selected visuals I have clicked on and update the slicer. In the image below, I am opening the self help overlay, so it is visible. However, I will just simply hide the visuals for closing the overlay.

Now that this is in place, I just need to update the actions on my help button and overlay image. To apply the close self help overlay action, I will select overlay image in the the report, go to the format pane and expand action. Once there, I will set the type of action to bookmark and select my close self help overlay bookmark. I will do the same to the open self help button inside of my report footer.

Now that you have this in place, you can easily open and close your self help overlay. To test this in Power BI desktop, you will need to hold down the control key to activate the action. However, that will not be required when you publish the report to the Power BI Service.

And just like that, we have enabled your viewers to learn more about your report with a single click!

Anything else to consider?

As convenient as the self help overlay is for your viewers, there is an additional burden for you to keep the overlay up to date. I recommend that you save your PowerPoint file for easy access and updates in the future. This will save you time in the future

I always recommend having a checklist of steps that must be completed when publishing content to the Power BI service. If you choose to use a self help overlay, a step must be added to ensure it is still valid. This will prevent any confusion from your report viewers in the future.

Conclusion

This seems like a trivial addition to a report, but I promise it makes life easier. Any chance you have to eliminate the questions coming to you is time well spent. While it is a little design intensive and adds a burden to future updates, it creates a better overall experience for your report viewers. I highly recommend trying it out once or twice in a development environment so you feel comfortable doing it in production.

So, have you ever created a self help overlay? Have you found it helpful? Or are you a viewer who has benefited from an overlay? Tell me about it in the comments below!