PowerBI Bookmark Selection

Is there a method for storing the selections from the visual?

I would like to be able to “pick” elements from the visual and save the selection much like the native bookmark tool, but that currently only appears to save the selections of content from slicers.

Perhaps there is some method for a workaround that would permit bookmarking selections from the visuals?

So far the best I’ve accomplished is letting users pick content from visual then manually export a list of element ids to specific folder. The dashboard auto-imports from that folder with each file being a unique selection set in a slicer. While it does work, it seems overly crude and there must be a better way?

Hey @Ding_Gus_Con ,

Our 3D Visual does not have that functionality. But I see Power BI has a built in bookmarking feature.

Create report bookmarks in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Since your data is now in Power BI, you can use all the existing features of Power BI and our 3D Visual should respond.

Bookmarks do not store element selections from visual.
The purpose of the visual in many use cases is to permit visual selection of content. Not being able to store the selection set removes the ability to efficiently track and forecast content.

I don’t understand why they won’t. As far as I can see, they do.

Bookmarks do not store selections made from the 3d visual.

Can you show the bookmark creation, from selecting elements within the 3d visual? I am only able to store bookmarks from table/slicer selections.

Being able to select from the 3d visual and store that selection is what I am after.

I also selected from the table. I understand your point now. I believe we can accomplish this, but I would consider this request non-critical, as a workaround is available.

Thanks for confirming, just trying to make sure I’m not missing something obvious on my end. Are you referring to the workaround as the csv import/export of the id’s? I’ll keep exploring to see if there’s another native method that can get the bookmarks to work.

I meant making your selection using the table visual or any other Power BI visual. You can extract any info from your loaded data and save your selection that way. For example, you can extract the category, level or any other property , populate a Table, make a selection and bookmark your selection from that table. What you bookmarked will be reflected in 3D Visual automatically.

Ahhhh, got it.

Thats asking a bit much of our field guys to be honest. Much of the data is not unique meaning the tables in the dashboards would not contain unique identifies aside from a GUID or ID which is not going to be easy to filter through manually.

Traditionally the field teams would mark-up floorplans in PDF so having the selection via the visual aside from table data is going to be the most familiar/easiest.

I think for the time being exporting the csv is likely the easiest end user experience. (They are auto-imported on refresh from folder).

Thanks again for all the responses.

IDs and GUIDs are pretty easy to extract from Speckle data. You can also export CSV and relate it to Speckle data. That way, it will work with the visual. If you can share some sample files, we’d be happy to help.

There isn’t any issue with extracting the GUIDs.

The problem is in the process for this use case. The field team does not know the GUID values that they need to select, hence why its better to select from the 3d visual.

In most cases they are selecting many items, basically everything that was poured on a given day, so figure upwards of 20-30 items.

The export csv you mentioned is the workaround we’ve been using. Basically let the user select items from 3d visual which filters a visual/table of IDs, then they can export that to csv in a known folder which is automatically reread during a refresh. The csv data is compiled per filename which is fed into a slicer which effectively creates selectable bookmark like collections for each csv.

So we have a functional workaround but I’m hoping there’s a more efficient/foolproof workaround. For example I’ve had end users are not well versed in PBI and sometimes export incorrect visuals to .csv which of course can break things, and you have to have some sort of public/shared folder which field teams don’t necessarily have access to due to internet connectivity on the job site.

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Thank you for providing such detailed explanations. This context is very helpful, and I will add it to our backlog.