When you interact with your presentation at runtime, it is often useful to select multiple elements in your visuals at one time. For example, you may want to select two similar promotion types in your pie chart to highlight the same information in another visual, such as a grid, or to filter related information with reference to those two similar options. Being able to multi-select items helps you to explore and understand your data on-the-fly.
Info: The actual effect of clicking or selecting one or more elements in a visual at runtime is configurable. Typically, the Single Click / Touch option in your Discover User Defaults indicates that a single click should perform the Interact (Highlight) action described in this topic. Where this is not the case, you can run the Interact action from the right-click context menu instead. For more information, see Present interactivity at runtime.
The following video provides a walkthrough of cross-highlighting with multi-item selection:
Keyboard multi-select (Ctrl+Click)
The most basic measure to use for multi-select is the typical keyboard shortcut:
- Click a measure or data point in your visual to select it.
- Ctrl+Click another measure or data point to select that also.
- Continue using Ctrl+Click to select more measures or data points as required.
Multi-highlight mode
The Keyboard multi-select option described above is only required if you are not viewing your runtime presentation in Multi-Highlight Mode. Multi-Highlight Mode allows you to click individual items to add them to your selection or remove them from your selection; without using Ctrl.
Tip: When Multi-Highlight Mode is enabled in the Present runtime menu or on the right-click option, it only lasts for one runtime session. To enable Multi-Highlight Mode for multiple sessions, select the option in the Runtime Settings.
Present runtime menu
- Click the hamburger menu at the top-left corner of the slide (green arrow).
- Toggle the Multi-Highlight Mode option to select it (green highlight).
- Now, when you return to the visual, you can select multiple measures or data points using a single click.
The Present runtime menu opens to the left of the page.
Note: When enabled using this option, Multi-Highlight Mode only lasts for one runtime session. If you click Esc to close the runtime presentation, and then open it again at runtime mode (F2), this option will no longer be selected.
Context Menu
The Multi-Highlight Mode option is also available on the right-click context menu at runtime when either the top panel of a visual or the slide background is selected. The context menu option is the same as the option accessed from the Present runtime menu.
Runtime Settings
If you want to enable Multi-Highlight Mode by default, select the Multi-Highlight Mode option in the Runtime Settings.
Multi-select using Panel Tools
Use the Lasso and Auto Lasso Selection tools to cross-filter by multiple elements.
Lasso Selection
- Click the Lasso Selection tool in the Panel Tools (blue highlight) to enable multiple element selection.
- Select the data points or members that you want to select.
- Right-click and select Data Interactions > Interact from the context menu (brown arrow).
Tip: You can select and drag your cursor across the items you want to select.
Note: This option is on the Data Interactions menu by default but may alternatively be at the root level. The structure of your context menu depends on your settings in User Defaults. For more information, see Context Menu.
Any target discoveries are filtered by the selected elements. Note the effect on the sub-menu (green highlight) and filtered data in the Cost by Promotion Type visual.
Auto Lasso Selection
Use the Auto Lasso Selection tool (blue arrow) to automatically cross-filter by the multi-selection:
In this case, as soon as the selection is made, the target visuals are cross-filtered with no need to click Interaction on the context menu.