Introduction
This challenge focuses on a powerful Power BI technique: conditional visibility using overlapping visuals and dynamic transparency.
Instead of hiding visuals entirely, you’ll learn to control visibility through background color transparency – making elements appear and disappear based on user selections.
Based on the selection of countries, we are looking at differences in foreign tourists over time.
Requirements
- Load data and build a line chart showing % of foreign tourist arrivals over time by country.
- Add a country slicer.
- For the transparency trick:
- Create two visuals occupying the same space:
- Visual A: Warning message (“Please select exactly two countries”)
- Visual B: Difference chart showing Country A – Country B (bonus: create a lollipop)
- Create a DAX measure returning a hex color code with alpha channel (e.g., “#FFFFFF00”)
- When ≠ 2 countries selected → Warning visible (
FF) - When = 2 countries selected → Warning transparent (
00) - Apply the color measure via conditional formatting on background of the card
- Create two visuals occupying the same space:
- Optional: create a summary card
Dataset
The dataset contains European tourism data from EUROSTAT covering 2015–2024. Each row represents one country-year combination with two arrival metrics: domestic tourist arrivals and foreign country arrivals.
Download the sample data from data.world.
[Please note: data.world requires you to create a free account to access the data, please sign in to see and download it.]
Share
After you finish your workout, share on Bluesky or LinkedIn using the hashtags #WOW2025 and #PowerBI, and tag Diana Ackermann (on Linkedin) or @MMarie, @shan_gsd, @KerryKolosko (on BlueSky).