Drill Down Waterfall PRO Visual
Thresholds

Transcript

All right, so previously we finished off with the x-axis customization in this video we're going to be going through the threshold customization for the waterfall visual.

As always, on a sample report you already have a pre-built example that you can explore. But for our use case we're going to open up the training view and actually build the chart and apply the thresholds on the fly.

So, first things first, let's create an instance of the waterfall visual. There we go. Let's resize it. Disable the background and the title, because we're not going to be using those. Now, as for the date itself, we're going to be using, again, date hierarchy, removing quarters and days. For the changes, we're going to be using difference, and for the sequence I'm applying this column right here. There we go.

Now, if we go into the formatting options, we can see that thresholds are actually disabled by default, so this is something that you have to manually enable if you want to apply any thresholds within the visual. All right, let's do that and turn on thresholds. Open up the tab, and you can see the first thing that we can define for threshold is whether this is a line or an area. So, just as a simple example, right, let's keep it as a line. And the value type - keep it as a constant.

Other options that you have here are some of the aggregation options that Power BI provides. Those are going to be first, last, minimum, maximum, average, median, and percentile. So, you can choose between these dynamic values if you want to do something a little bit more dynamic. Now, going back to the constant one, I'm going to provide just a random value, let's say There we go. We have a small line right here. It's kind of hard to see because the colors are not great.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to readjust the colors, make the line fully non-transparent, and increase its' width, so it's a lot easier to notice it. So, there you go. Just a constant threshold going throughout the chart for Now, if we go lower, you can see we can also enable value labels. If we do that, you can see that additional settings are going to appear. By default, you can see that on the threshold you already have the value being displayed.

Additionally, you can customize the label itself to showcase text and value, just the text or just the value. In this case, let's just use text and value. And within label 1 text, I'm gonna say that this is just random threshold. There we go. Now you can see that this allows you to name the thresholds, so they actually explain a bit more about the use case or about those lines to the end-user. Because remember, when you're building a report, it doesn't necessarily mean that the end-user fully understands what you have created. So always run through these things with the end-user so they know how to read the chart.

Now, further customization, of course, applies to the label colors, background colors, their opacities, lines and so forth. Some other things that you can do here is you can also position the threshold horizontally on the left-hand side, so this label right here. Or you can also move it to the right-hand side. Make sure that it's sitting in a place where it's not overlapping with the columns, otherwise it's going to be hard to read.

The other thing that you can do here is you can also adjust the vertical position, so either above or underneath the threshold. So, these plus some padding capabilities, display units, value decimals and so forth allow you to furthermore customize the thresholds and achieve interesting results. Now, if we go back to the top, I'm just going to redo the same threshold again. But instead of line, I'm going to go for a threshold area. The added benefit of this is that you actually have two values to play around with. You have the value from, and you have the value too.

So, in this case, let's say I want to highlight everything that goes up until the same value, which was but for the labels, we're not going to be needing that. There we go. You can see it highlights this particular area.

Now, if I scroll down a bit more, I can actually enable a second threshold, and here I can say that, okay, it's going to be also an area. But here I want to highlight everything that goes above to make a difference here, because by default the colors are going to be the same, so I'm just going to adjust the colors for the fill. And for this one, I'm going to apply a green coloring.

So, one thing that you can also do here is change the threshold position. By default, it's going to be above. What it means is it's sitting in front of the columns. If you put it under, it's going to be in the background of the chart, so it's not interfering with the actual columns. So, we do have two threshold areas now. Something else that you can do here is actually create either a third area or something a bit more dynamic. In this case, what we're going to create is actually going to be a dynamic line, which is going to indicate a closing value.

So, for that one, let's enable third threshold. Keep it as a line, but for the value type, I'm actually going to take last. And i'm going to go for series 2, since that's my total column. So, for the line itself, again, I'm going to readjust the colors to, let's say again, the black line right here. Make it more prominent by increasing the width like 4 percent and changing the opacity, so that it's fully non-transparent. Scrolling down, I'm going to enable the label, and I'm going to name it "closing value". There you go.

So again, providing these allows your end-user to read the chart a lot faster. Some other interesting ideas, for example, are if you go to the main page of the sample report, you can see that I've also created an area here. But instead of providing a specific value for it, I've only used a label text and within that text, I provide a target range for closing value.

So, there are multiple ways on how you can do this and achieve interesting results, as long as they, you know, explain the chart to the end-user and allows them to get insightful actions.

All right, so that's going to be it for the threshold customization, and I'll see you in the next video.