Documentation

Quickstart

Drill Down Timeline PRO is our second custom Power BI visual for date/time-based data. Timeline PRO carries over all ZoomCharts signature features of TimeSeries PRO – intuitive on-chart user interactions for navigation and drill downs, extensive customization, and cross-chart filtering – but expands the functionality and provides even more flexibility to report creators. 


Timeline PRO employs matrix data structure, which can be leveraged by report creators to have full control over the date hierarchy. In addition, Timeline PRO has full support for DAX measures and calculated columns, conditional formatting, and up to 25 series (of three different chart types) on the same chart. You can read a more detailed comparison between our two visuals for date/time-based data – TimeSeries PRO and Timeline PRO – in this blog article. 

Drill Down Timeline PRO uses datetime values to create a time dimension scale on the X-axis, which will then be used to display numerical values from the Series fields as columns, areas, or lines on the Y-axis. This visual has three mandatory fields - Date Hierarchy, Date Value (X-Axis) and at least one Series. You can read more about Timeline PRO data requirements in the Setting Up Fields page of this documentation.


When you create a blank Power BI report, you will be presented with multiple options: you can import your own data, paste it into a blank table, or try a sample data set that’s provided by Power BI. The latter option is recommended if you want to experiment with the features of Drill Down Timeline PRO without using your own data.

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Adding Drill Down Timeline PRO to Power BI

If you have downloaded this visual from Microsoft AppSource within Power BI Desktop, its icon should automatically appear in the Visualizations pane on the right side of your Power BI window. 

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If you have acquired Drill Down Timeline PRO externally, you may need to add it to Power BI manually. You can do that by clicking the ellipsis button at the end of the visualizations list, and pressing Import a visual from a file. Locate the .pbiviz file and the visual will be added to the Visualizations pane.

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You need to activate your trial or have a valid license to use the PRO features of this visual. Read more about licensing on this page.
Creating a timeline chart with Drill Down Timeline PRO

Add Drill Down Timeline PRO to your Power BI report by clicking the visual’s icon in the Visualizations pane. Doing so will create a blank visual that contains no data. Once you add at least one valid column in each of the required fields – Date Hierarchy, Date Value (X-Axis) and Series – Timeline PRO will visualize your data using the default formatting settings.

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You can then head to the Format Visual tab of the Visualizations pane to customize your chart (either each individual series or all series), including selecting the chart type for each series (column, line, or area), applying custom color fill and outline settings, adjusting stacking and clustering behavior, and more.


Format Visual tab also contains various options to adjust formatting settings, customize legends, tooltips, thresholds and more, or enable a Secondary Y-Axis. If you want to enable cross-chart filtering to use this visual as an interactive filter for the entire report (or vice versa – filter your timeline chart with other visuals), you can do that with the Use as Filter toggle.