Dynamic field parameters in Power BI are like filters that allow users to quickly slice and dice data in real-time. This means faster report speeds and less frustration for users. By consolidating multiple reports into a single self-service report, developers can save time and resources while empowering users to explore and analyze data the data they view as valuable on their own.

Example: Imagine you are reviewing sales data across your territory, and you would like to compare the sales of products by category and the return rate. You could have a developer create this table, or even create it yourself, by clicking whichever fields you find desirable, then the data populates in real time. Maybe you don’t want to see sales, but instead you want to see profit, revenue, and costs as a time-series analysis. You can select those fields and they will populate in the visual.

Benefits of Using Dynamic Parameters

Improved Performance:

• Using field parameters allows the Power BI report to use less visualizations, eliminating duplicate fields and allowing the visualization to load only necessary data. Thereby reducing the overall load of resources on the dashboard.

Reduced Report Maintenance:

• With less resources being used; the underlying dataset will have a reduced risk of failing during its refresh. Likewise, with less resources being used in the report, visuals will have a reduced risk of timing out. If a visualization needs to be updated, adding a parameter to the self-service report is simple and easy.

Reduced Infrastructure Costs:

• Because less resources are being used, this frees up premium capacity resources for other workspaces/reports/datasets to utilize. Often, datasets and reports fail to refresh or load all the visualizations due to the premium capacity reaching its limit.

Pulling It All Together

Using dynamic field parameters in Power BI allows developers to create self-service reports without having to crowd a dashboard with various KPIs and metrics. This reduces the premium capacity resources needed to interact with a report and improves performance by limiting the volume of data loaded and processed if using a Direct Query data connection method.

There is also a human resource cost savings for maintaining reports and its underlying dataset that utilizes dynamic field parameters. Developers will no longer need to spend time analyzing the dataset when modifying the report. They can simply add fields to the parameter list, and it will populate across all areas that utilize it.  

About the Author:

Rick Johnson – BI Developer:

As a Business Intelligence Developer, I work with clients to elevate and maintain their Power BI environments by optimizing their premium capacity performance, delivering company solutions using enhanced ETL process and architecture, and act as an advanced issue resolution specialist. I’ve managed over 3,000 workspaces as a Power BI Administrator and developed C-suite reports using cloud-based data sources. My main technology stack resides in SQL, Python, machine learning, and M-Query but I’ve been known to dabble in PowerShell and other languages where needed.