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DAX calculations at visual level of reports

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Marco Russo on 22 May 2020 15:48:20

Provide a simple way to write formulas that work with the data displayed in a visual. For example, the running total of a measure in a table or in a chart according to the sort order of the visual should be something like this:

Running Total = ReportData[Sales] + PREVIOUS ( ReportData[Running Total] )

Where ReportData is the content of the current visual, Sales and Running Total are the names of the columns in the current visual. The user is not expected to know the model content, the calculation can be executed on top of any data currently being displayed.

More details about a proposal for visual calculations in DAX here:
https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/a-proposal-for-visual-calculations-in-dax/

Jeroen ter Heerdt (administrator) on 20 Feb 2024 22:23:33

Visual calculations are in preview since February 2024: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/visual-calculations-preview/.

 

Update 10/17: This is now in our upcoming roadmap and we will share more details in the coming months.

March 2022 update: We are planning to support this, but we currently do not have a timeline

Comments (68)
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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:24

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

¡Buena idea!

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k s on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:20

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

This is an excellent idea. I regularly program in 3 other languages and have used at least a dozen over time. I cannot for the life of me be bothered to learn another language especially one that has such a narrow use and doesn't look much like the other languages I already use. I generally find Power BI so clunky that I use R visualisations for anything requiring data processing.

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Renganathan Palanisamy on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:15

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

Awesome idea, Microsoft , please accept and make it a reality!

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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:14

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

https://t.co/7BNykBEisw this xViz visual does it with no DAX

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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:14

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

Good one!👍🏼

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German Henriquez on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:13

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

Great Idea¡.

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:13

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

For someone just embracing DAX, this makes a lot of common sense. It will underscore Microsoft's new ethos to simply the use of its products, particularly on coding, which it is successfully evangelizing through the no-code/low code power app development. Microsoft should not wait for the sufficient number of votes to be generated before implementing this evolutionary transformation to DAX.

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charles otstot on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:13

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

Great idea!

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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:13

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

For someone just embracing DAX, this makes a lot of common sense. It will underscore Microsoft's new ethos to simply the use of its products, particularly on coding, which it is successfully evangelizing through the no-code/low code power app development. Microsoft should not wait for the sufficient number of votes to be generated before implementing this evolutionary transformation to DAX.

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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:14:12

RE: DAX calculations at visual level of reports

I could not agree more with this idea. PBI is seen by many users in an organisation as a layer of complexity which makes analysis harder rather then simpler. Most of them have very limited or none programming knowledge, but are quite capable in Excel.

The first question I am asked when teaching PBI is “okay very cool but how do I export it in Excel to manipulate it?”.

In many cases I have seen PBI reports exported and new charts redone in Excel because “I needed to add a running total” or a Pareto analysis or whatever.

To be honest, after having spent hours to build a datamodel and struggled to make complex reports intelligible this is, as a professional, somewhat a failure. But I cannot blame the user which has little time to fiddle around DAX and cannot ask for help every time he needs to add a trivial calculation.
So yes! visual measures and a cool interactive UI to go with it!