Power BI offers several options to create filters and slicers in a report. However, it is not possible to define a default filter at the model level so that every new report on a dataset automatically applies that filter. The absence of this feature is becoming rather problematic with the advent of calculation groups.
For example, imagine you have a default selection for a calendar year in a report, even though you have not set any slicer or filter for the Year column in the report. In many scenarios, it would be useful to get a “default selection” for a column. It would be particularly useful for certain calculation groups. For example, you might want to enable the currency exchange conversion by default on a report: This would be very simple to obtain by setting a default calculation item for the calculation group implementing the currency conversion. Unfortunately, this feature is not available at the model level. You can apply a report-level filter in Power BI, but this operation must be performed on every report.
This feature is available in Analysis Services Multidimensional and there is no corresponding feature in Tabular. Calculation groups make this requirement more important. There is an idea related to default selected slicers that is still under review with 390 comments and more than 3,000 votes, but despite the votes and the many comments, the idea is still under review. Therefore, I created a new idea that is more specific: Define default selection for a column in the model. Please, vote it if you think it would be useful.