Field parameters in Power BI: let readers switch what a chart shows

Reports often end up with six near-identical charts: sales by region, by product, by channel, then the same again for margin. Field parameters in Power BI replace them with one chart and a slicer, where the reader chooses the measure, the breakdown, or both. They're built into Power BI Desktop and need no custom visual.

Create a field parameter

1. In Power BI Desktop, select Modeling > New parameter > Fields.
2. Name the parameter after what the reader chooses, for example Breakdown.
3. Select the fields to switch between, such as Region, Product category and Channel. Drag them to change the order, and double-click one to change the name readers see.
4. Leave Add slicer to this page selected and select Create.

Make a second one, Metric, with your measures: Sales, Margin, Orders. You can mix measures and columns in one parameter, which is how you build a table whose columns the reader chooses.

Use it in a visual

Build a bar chart and use the parameters instead of fields:

• Breakdown (a parameter of columns) goes on the Y-axis (or X-axis for a column chart).
• Metric (a parameter of measures) goes on the X-axis values.

If the reader selects several measures and the visual supports more than one, they're shown side by side. The same parameter can drive several visuals on the page at once.

The slicer readers use

The slicer the setup added lists the field names: the reader picks Region or Channel. Two settings worth knowing:

• Turn on Single select in the slicer's format settings when only one choice makes sense, such as one measure on a single-series chart.
• For a parameter of columns, right-click it in the Build pane and choose Show values of the selected field. The slicer then shows the values of each field as levels of one hierarchy. With Year, Month and Weekday in one parameter, a reader can filter to "every Sunday" or "Sundays in March 2026" from one slicer. Show selected field switches it back. (This isn't available for parameters of measures.)

A title that follows the choice

A chart titled "Sales by region" is wrong as soon as someone picks Margin or Channel. Each parameter is a table whose first column, named after the parameter, holds the display names, so a measure can read the reader's choices:

Chart title =
SELECTEDVALUE ( Metric[Metric], "Several measures" )
    & " by "
    & LOWER ( SELECTEDVALUE ( Breakdown[Breakdown], "several breakdowns" ) )

Select the chart, go to Format visual > General > Title, select fx next to the title Text, pick Chart title in the dialog, and select OK. The measure must return text, which this one does. SELECTEDVALUE returns the fallback text when more than one field is selected.

Edit it later

There's no dialog for editing; you change the DAX. Select the parameter table in the Data pane and its definition appears in the formula bar:

Breakdown = {
    ("Region", NAMEOF ( 'Store'[Region] ), 0),
    ("Product category", NAMEOF ( 'Product'[Category] ), 1),
    ("Channel", NAMEOF ( 'Sales'[Channel] ), 2)
}

Each row is the name readers see, the field, and its position. To add a field, add a comma and a new row with the next number. Microsoft supports exactly these three values per row and says to keep every value unique; extra columns can give unexpected results.

Limits to know

Field parameters change what is shown; to change how each value looks, see our heat map tutorial for conditional formatting, and designing a KPI card for headline numbers.

Sources

• Use field parameters to let report readers change visuals — Microsoft Learn
• Expression-based titles in Power BI Desktop — Microsoft Learn
• Composite models on Power BI semantic models and Analysis Services — Microsoft Learn