Using the selection pane
The Selection pane allows you to do three things: control the layer order, control the tab order, and show and hide elements on the reporting page.
The Select pane can be toggled on and off from the View tab, the same as the Bookmarks panel.
Figure 11.3 – The Selection panel can be opened from the View ribbon
Tab order
The first thing you need to know for the test is that you can control the tab order for your report page. This is very important for visually impaired consumers who might be using an adaptive device to view your report. This is also nice for hands-on-keyboard-type people who like to tab through things rather than use the mouse.
Tab order is just what it sounds like, it controls what visualization is next highlighted by hitting the Tab key.
Figure 11.4 – Setting the tab order for our keyboard-first report users
Layer order
The Layer order tab controls the other two things in the Selection pane, the layer order and the visibility.
The layer order controls what visuals appear on top of other visuals. You can control this in two places: the Selection pane and the Format tab. The Format tab has the standard Microsoft Office Bring forward and Send backward choices. Using these buttons has the same effect as moving a visual upward or downward in the layer order.
Figure 11.5 – Bring forward and Send backward work exactly the same as in other Microsoft products
The other key thing you can do in the Layer order pane is to hide and show visualizations. You can then bookmark the state of the page with the visuals shown or hidden.
Creating custom tooltips
Tooltips appear when you hover your mouse over a visualization. The tooltip will, by default, be a black box with gray text that displays information about the data point your mouse is over.
Figure 11.6 – By default, tooltips show the same data that’s in the visualization
Tooltips are a great way to add information to your report without cluttering up the reporting surface. You can add more data fields to the tooltip in the Tooltips region in the visuals pane.
Figure 11.7 – Providing the end user with more information using tooltips
You are not limited to just the gray text on a black background. You can change the background color of the tooltip, the font of the text, and the color of both the label and the values.
This lets you customize the tooltip to fit in with the rest of the report, keeping fonts and colors consistent throughout the report.
Figure 11.8 – You can change the colors and fonts for your tooltips. Just remember, with great power comes great responsibility
You can create an entire report page that will display as a tooltip. This allows you to place visualizations in a tooltip, adding yet another layer of information while keeping the report canvas less cluttered.
To create a tooltip page, add a new page to the report. In the Format pane for the new page, click on the Tooltips slider. You may also want to resize the page to the default tooltip size, but that is not a requirement. Just remember, you want this page to appear over a portion of your report surface, not completely obliterate it.
Figure 11.9 – Setting a page to be used for a tooltip
On the Build visual for the report page, add the fields you want to trigger the tooltip to the Tooltip area. You have the option of keeping all filters or not, much like a drillthrough page, which we will cover later in this chapter.
Once you have added the visuals that you want to your tooltip page, go back to the visual you want to use on the tooltip page.
Figure 11.10 – Tooltip pages can really enhance your report, adding layers of data