I have created a calculated field that will select a calculation based on a parameter that the user selects. For example, if the user selects “Calculation A” in the control, then this will return the value associated with “Calculation A”.
When this calculation is in a visual, the tooltip won’t dynamically change to show “Calculation A”, instead it will show the calculation name itself and won’t dynamically change based on the selection. As a workaround I have created another calculation that returns just the parameter and have placed this above the value in the tooltip so it will show something like this:
Calculation A
200
(instead of Calculation A 200)
However, the visual now needs to include additional measures that are independent of the parameter and when adding this, it is presenting the tooltip in the standard way (horizontal), while my parameter-driven measure is displayed vertically. This creates a disjointed view in the tooltip with one showing the values horizontally and one vertically.
A workaround I tried was with the sheet tooltip but couldn’t find the right solution for this.
I hope this makes sense but if not, happy to provide more info
Hi @williamsonc and welcome to the Quick Community!
The core issue is that standard detailed tooltips don’t support dynamic labels. The label for a field in the tooltip is always the static text you enter when editing it, so there’s no way to make it change based on a parameter selection. That’s why your workaround of adding a separate calculated field to show the parameter value creates the formatting mismatch you’re seeing: dimensions displayed as “Unique Value” render differently from regular measures in the detailed tooltip, and there’s no way to control that layout.
Sheet tooltips give you full control over how everything is arranged. You’d create a tooltip sheet (Format Visual > Interactions > Tooltip > Sheet tooltip), then use a text box on that sheet with a parameter reference (<<$YourParameterName>>) to display the dynamic label. Since text boxes in QuickSight support parameter references, the label will update whenever the user changes the control selection. For the values themselves, you can add a KPI visual or a small table showing both your parameter-driven measure and your other independent measures, all in the same consistent layout since sheet tooltips use free-form positioning. You can read more about the setup in this AWS blog post on sheet tooltips and the tooltip documentation.
One thing to keep in mind is that sheet tooltips recalculate measures in their own isolated context, so if any of your independent measures use table calculations (like runningSum or percentile rankings across rows), those won’t carry over. Regular aggregations work fine though. Also, your sheet tooltip can be up to 640px wide by 720px tall and include up to 5 visuals, so you have plenty of room to lay things out cleanly.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any additional questions!
My independent measures are causing me a bigger issue now. I have a multi-value parameter which allows users to select different measures they are interested in, and I have created calculated fields that dynamically return the relevant measure(s) based on the user’s selection. This allows me to add/remove different lines on a graph depending on what the user selects.
This works as expected in the visual itself, but I am running into an issue when using these fields in a sheet tooltip. Even when the calculated field returns null, the row/field still appears rather than being hidden.
From what I can see, QuickSight does not appear to have a way to “hide” rows where a calculated measure returns null. Is there a recommended workaround for this scenario?
You’re correct that QuickSight won’t hide things on the tooltip sheet just because a calculated field returns null. The sheet renders every visual you’ve placed on it regardless. You need a separate mechanism to control visibility.
The most reliable path I think is to restructuring your data so that the measure name becomes a dimension and the value is a single metric column (basically unpivoting your measures into rows). On the tooltip sheet you’d then have a single table visual with that measure-name dimension filtered directly by ${MeasureParameter} using a standard “equals” filter. Only the measures the user has selected show up as rows, and everything else is simply filtered out before it ever renders. It scales well if your list of selectable measures grows, and it sidesteps per-measure visibility logic entirely. The downside is you lose the ability to position each measure independently since they’ll all live in one table.
If you need more layout control (each measure in its own KPI visual, for example), you can use conditional rules on the tooltip sheet instead. Hide each visual by default (Properties → Interactions → Rules → “Hide this visual by default”), then add a rule to show it when ${MeasureParameter} contains the relevant value. The “Contains” operator is supported for string parameters per the conditional rules docs, and the sheet tooltip blog post demonstrates this parameter-driven visibility pattern. I’ll caveat that I haven’t been able to confirm explicitly whether “Contains” evaluates cleanly against a multi-value dropdown (the docs describe it for “string parameters” without distinguishing single vs. multi-value), so I’d test it with your setup first. If it doesn’t cooperate, the table restructuring approach above is the safer bet.
One other thing to keep in mind: sheet tooltips recalculate measures in their own isolated context, so if any of your independent measures use table calculations (runningSum, percentile rankings, etc.), those won’t carry over. Regular aggregations are fine though.
Moreover, if you published your dashboard to the Arena Dashboard Sandbox and share the link here, I can take a look at your setup directly and work through the specifics with you.
Just checking back in since this thread hasn’t received a response in a while. Was Jacob’s reply helpful to you and/or were you able to find a solution yourself in the meantime? Please help the community by marking this answer as “Solution” or following up in general within the next 3 business days!
Unfortunately, I can’t restructure this dataset as it is being used for various dashboards. The solution itself seems sound but won’t fit my specific purpose. However the layout control managed to get me close enough to my solution.