Bookmarks are one of Power BI’s Most Creative Additions To-Date:

The possibilities and utility that bookmarks add to reports really is impressive. Though this feature is not brand new, it remains an extremely relevant tool and therefore is worth the time required to educate ourselves on the many uses.

Real life examples are excellent for relaying meaning. Therefore, I’m going to show one of my own reports and five unique ways I used bookmarks to enhance the user experience.

A bit of background. This report will seem very cryptic to most of you, but that’s okay. For those who are interested, I have been playing Magic: The Gathering casually and competitively for just about 8 years now. Magic as game is impressive for many reasons including its high versatility, which leaves room for continued learning and endless ways to enjoy the game. My favorite way to play Magic over the last 2 years has been Cube Drafting.

What is Cube Drafting? Drafting in Magic is where players participate in a small tournament without cards from their collection, but rather with surprise booster packs that they open at the beginning. During the drafting process, players choose cards they would like to use and then compete with 8 - 10 people in a Swiss style tournament. When playing a Cube Draft, the only difference is that players will choose cards from a Cube.

A Cube is collection of 360-1000 magic cards that have been specifically chosen by a player to ensure the most enjoyable game play possible. Whether that experience is built around the most powerful cards in Magic, or a random fun theme, that is up to the Cube builder. My Cube contains 450 cards and is meant to provide the most competitive experience possible.

A Bit More About Magic:

Here are some very basics about Magic to help you extract meaning in my report.

In Magic players battle one vs one using decks made up of the 5 colours including; White (W), Blue (U), Black (B), Red (R) and Green (G). Each colour has dramatically different styles and strategies, and players can mix and match colours for even more variation. It is important for a Cube designer to ensure that each strategy and colour is balanced. Now, here is where my reporting comes in.

I built this report to monitor and understand the strategies behind my Cube (and also record player scores!). Most of the insights hinge around the colours of the Magic decks, and my valuable players.