Skip to main content

Avoiding Unwanted Outcomes using Date Columns


Many people have dates as part of their data sets.  Dates are great to allow us to view our data aggregations in smaller buckets in order to get extra details about our situation.  Sometimes though we are faced with having multiple date columns in one table. The more date columns the better, right?  

Well, this can usually lead to two outcomes.  1) Frustration that you can’t view the data based on your 2nd date column 2) Not realizing the data you are looking at is in fact NOT accurate. 

I will show you in the video both of these unwanted scenarios.  More importantly, however, I will show you how you can use some fairly simple DAX and modeling relationship techniques to resolve the issue.

 Let me set up the scenario in this video for you.  I’ve made a very basic Excel file that tracks sales by what state they occurred in, when the sale occurred, and when the sale shipped out.  So if I want my team to see the number of actual sales that have occurred I would use the sale date column.  If, however, I need my shipping department to be made aware of how much money we have fully processed in terms of shipping I need to express my sales by the ship date.

Follow along with me in this video as we will show how to accomplish this using DAX.  

Some extra tidbits I’ll be throwing in at the beginning of this video is how to make your own Date Table when one isn’t given to you in your original data model.  For a more in-depth look at how the date table is made check out Devin Knight’s blog

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Power of CALCULATE in Power BI

Last week in my blog and video I discussed how Power BI could have made my life as a teacher much easier.  It is not that Power BI can do things that I could not on my own.  It is the fact that Power BI could have saved me so much time.   This led me to some thoughts and questions.   How could I have impacted the students more in the classroom with this extra time?  Would teachers who were not analyzing student data due to time constraints now start?  How can I make the data tell my students a story that gives them an accurate picture of their progress?   That last question is what leads to this week’s blog.   Many times the metrics (which is just a fancy word for "numbers") of what we want to show are easy to do by hand with a basic math background.  Although easy, it can be very time consuming when dealing with different groups of data: like 6 periods of students instead of 1 period. When we want to do these calculations quickl...
7 comments
Read more

Relating "Related Tables" to Baseball because I Miss Sports

I miss sports. In particular, I miss baseball. Between learning more Power BI functions and the ins-and-outs of DAX, I've turned to Netflix to fill the deep caverns left in my soul since baseball season has been postponed. And as a result, I've thought more about tigers and big cats more than I ever have in my life. I know ALL about Carol Baskins and am fully on board for a spin-off centering on locating her lost husband. I've googled "is it really legal to own a tiger in a residential area?" Without baseball in April, I am barely hanging in there (kinda like Joe Exotic's eyebrow ring). So, I am filling the sports-sized hole by using baseball stats in Power BI to demonstrate pulling data from multiple tables and consolidating it into one table.  Some of the data we want to consolidate also has to have some aggregations (which is fancy for "calculations") performed on it.  In this demo I will attempt to break down what is really going on ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Power BI: Personalize Visuals Feature

    Have you used the personalize visuals feature yet in Power BI?   If not, then you could be missing out.   The Personalize Visuals feature allows anyone you are sharing your with after published to the Power BI service to make changes to your visuals.   Have no fear though!   When they change the visuals it will not override your original report.   This feature is great if you have ever had to respond to a request from your shared users that they would like the report to be modified to their liking.   With this simple feature, the end-user can change the visualization type, change what measures or fields that are brought into the visual, and then simply make a personal bookmark after they make the changes.   Again, this will not change the initial report you published and that others have access to.   This will only make a new view of the report for the user who personalized the visual.   If you decide to use this feature...
2 comments
Read more