In today’s blog post, I’ll discuss some techniques on how to organize measures using a measure table in Power BI.
The best way to organize your measures is to create measure groups or measure tables inside Power BI.
It’s important to learn this technique because you’ll be dealing with hundreds of measures in your analysis. Creating measure tables will help you access the needed measures efficiently.
This will also help you reduce the number of redundant measures by grouping common measures together.
Creating A Measure Table Inside Power BI
Inside your model, you’ll be creating hundreds of measures as needed. When you create measures without selecting the appropriate table first, it can land in other tables. This is why it’s important that you know how to organize them properly.
In this example, there are already a lot of existing measures inside the Sales table.
To organize these measures, you need to create a measure group or measure table inside Power BI.
To do that, click the Home ribbon and click Enter Data.
You should name the said measure group as Key Measures because they are the core measures that you’ll be using in your analysis. After renaming it, click Load.
Now, you can see the said measure table along with the other tables in your model.
The next thing you need to do is to set the Key Measures table as your primary table. To do that, click the Home Table drop-down list, and then select Key Measures.
You’ll see that the Total Sales column is placed inside the Key Measures table.
Additionally, you need to delete Column1 here because you won’t need it. Just right-click and delete the said column.
To check if the measure table is now your primary table, click the Show/hide pane symbol and click out of it again to refresh the view. After that, you can see the Key Measures table at the top represented by a calculator symbol.
Now, you can easily place the necessary Power BI measures into this measure table. This is a very important technique in organizing your model.
Using A Measure Table Inside A Power BI Model
To show you more examples of measure tables, let’s go back to the demo model.
As you can see, there’s a lot of measure tables in the sample data model. Later on, I’ll teach you some techniques on how to segment these into logical groups.
The Key Measures table will eventually appear in your data model. However, it’s not part of the core structure so you can just put it on the right-hand side of the model.
Just make sure to name the measure table properly inside Power BI so you can easily reference it when needed.
***** Related Links *****
Implementing DAX Measure Groups Into Your Reports
Quick Measures – How To Use Them In Power BI Models
Measure Branching: Power BI Development Strategy
Conclusion
The process of organizing your measures gets easier by using a measure group or measure table in Power BI.
Once you apply this technique a couple of times, you’ll definitely get the hang of it. Make sure to implement this process every time you’re working on your analysis.
All the best!
Sam
