Skip to main content

Power BI

Completed

Measure Management & DAX Editor

Vote (7240) Share
DaveG's profile image

DaveG on 09 Jan 2018 10:55:44

Anyone who uses PowerBI long enough has had a PBIX with 50-60 measures and it has become time consuming and tedious to mantain. In Excel you can do a quick find/replace to edit several formulas - in PowerBI you need to select each one individually. An "excel-like" interface for editing measures would save a lot of time! This would take PowerBI to the next level regarding productivity. I've prepared a mockup for this as well as a DAX Editor. Let me know what you think.

Mockup: https://i.imgur.com/z6TBOQb.png?1

Zoe Douglas (administrator) on 05 Dec 2023 23:44:57

DAX query view is now in public preview in Power BI Desktop which includes a DAX editor and measure management. Deep dive into DAX query view and writing DAX queries | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Comments (129)
DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Roman Shapkov on 16 Aug 2020 04:01:09

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

incredible!

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Jim Richards on 16 Aug 2020 04:01:08

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

I think this would be a great addition.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Power BI User on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:59

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

Very good idea, the process of adding and changing measures is way to tedious at the moment. I really hope this get's picked up quickly.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Michael on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:58

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

Great idea! Plus creating a new measure in my model takes over 3 mins before I can start typing. Imaging if I make a typo or syntax error on top of that? Im pushing 8-9 mins if I make a mistake.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

DaveG on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:58

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

Great point Michael! What may also be handy is to have a toggle like in Excel to temporarily disable re-calculations until all your edits are done. This way you can make all your edits and not have to wait for the model to re-calculate after each edit.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

DaveG on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:55

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

One huge benefit that this measure management system solves that is not mentioned above is it allows users to easily copy ALL measures and calculated columns from one PBIX to another. They can also be extracted to an Excel file for easy reference.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

DaveG on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:55

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

Thank you for all those who have voted so far!

If any Microsoft Teams are reading this I'd like to note that when I mention "excel-like" interface - it does not need any fancy functionality - a simple editable table like shown in the mockup would be an enormous time saver. Further functionality can be added later (like tracing dependents, formula drag-down, DAX syntax coloring, etc), but this basic editable table would be a 1000x improvement compared to clicking each measure individually. Imagine needing to create 50 measures: currently you need to press "Create new measure" and edit the formula each one at a time. With this proposed design you can create them once in PowerBI OR quickly in a table in Excel, and then simply paste them all into the existing PBIX or any other going forward. This would make collaborating between team members much easier, as well as allow you to seamlessly create standardized measure templates for all team members to use. Thanks for reading.

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Kristoffer Absalonsen on 16 Aug 2020 04:00:55

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

Very good idea!

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Daniel Davis on 06 Jul 2020 00:02:30

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

I love DaveG's mockup

DaveG's profile image Profile Picture

Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 23:40:27

RE: Measure Management & DAX Editor

A simple way around this is to create an empty table in power bi, name it _Measures so it appears at the top and then create all your measures in this. I have multiple tables when I need specifically named Measure Groups

Merged Idea (3)