Power BI matrix to show unrelated table columns - powerbi

I have a matrix in Power BI that shows sales and stock information from two tables, by year and region. Third table that contains article IDs and is linked to both tables and used as a slicer. I have also created another table with years and linked it to both tables as well so I could get both sales and stock information on the same matrix.
Sales table contains sales and qty by year and region, while stock table contains stock information only by year.
As a consequence, my matrix shows same stock information for all regions but I would like it to only show it for regions where we have sales (only Asia in example below). Since I do not have stock information by region in stock table but only by year, is there a way to make stock appear in matrix only in regions where we have sales data?

I was able to solve this using TREATAS function in DAX to connect two unrelated tables.

Related

how to display multiple different lines corresponding to selected elements in slicer in power bi dashboard

I'm trying to use power bi to visualize sales of different products over months. Say there is sale data of 10 products, p1~p10, for the past 10 years. I added a slicer for products. By selecting elements inside slicer, their sale data is plotted.
However, when selecting multiple products, their sales data are summed as one line, and I cannot compare them.
I want to use something like a slicer to select interested products (all products, some or just one), then their sales are plotted individually in a chart, so that it's easy to compare them. When a product is deselected, its line is gone. Thanks for your help.

Power BI Divide two measure from different tables and show in a graph with time

I have two tables, Table one has daily data, Table two has weekly data. I've created a start of week column in Table 1 to get weekly data. Data is as shown below :
I want to create a table where I can divide these two measures. Both measures are counts in a week. I want to present this in a line/bar chart with time at the x-axis. Right now when I use the Date of Table 1, My measure 2 takes the overall count as the date of table 2 is not present and vice versa. I was thinking of creating a new Calendar table but I'm unable to get these measure values in that table.
I tried creating a custom calendar table but I'm not getting the desired result. I'm getting correct values from table 2 but no values from table 1. I feel the problem is because table 1 has duplicate date values.
Table 1 actual data before consolidation:Measure is the count of case numbers
I think you need a slight paradigm shift in your thinking, potentially.
Rather than looking for a way to create a third table from two other tables, what you should do is create a relationship between the two tables to make a rational description of how you want these tables to work, and then write the DAX on top of it.
So, in your case, you describe one table having daily data, and the other having weekly. The intermediary calendar table would be a daily calendar, where each day (row) knows the end of week date.
You would then create a relationship from your daily table to the calendar table based on day, and create a second relationship to your weekly table based on end of week date. (assuming bi-directional filtering)
You could then create a measure:
myRatio = DIVIDE(SUM(DailyTable[value]), SUM(weeklyTable[value])
In your chart, you can then show the daily value as a fraction of the weekly value by using the 'Day' field from the calendar table, or you could show the ratio of the complete week from the daily table to the weekly total in the weekly table by using the end of week date in the chart.
If what you truly need is a 3rd table, then you could use the SUMMARIZE() function on this 3 table set to do the summarization into a 3rd table using the same principle.
myNewTable =
SUMMARIZE(calendarTable
,calendarTable[End of Week Date]
,"My Ratio" //the name of the field you want to create
,[My Ratio] //the formula to describe what goes in the field
)

Power BI problem in direct active relationship

I have a problem with Power BI in the use of multiple direct active relationship between two table.
I have this 2 table: Population and Cost and I want to graph the the costs over the years in the different regions according to the population of the region.
In Population the attributes of my interest are: Year, Region, #Population, insted in Cost I have: Year, Region, Costs. So I need to create two active relationship between Year and Region in the two tables. However I can't do that in Power BI.
I tryed to generate a new Population table (an identical copy of the other) and create the two active relationship: the first (for Years) between Cost and one Population, the second (for Region) between Cost and the other Population.
Unfortunately this solution is not successful, in fact, by dividing the costs for the population, in one case I obtain the aggregation over all the years, in the other the aggregation of all regions.
Does anyone have any idea how to solve the problem?
Each Power BI relationship is limited to a single column from each table. The typical workaround to your scenario is to create a concatenated column on each table.
You can do this in the Query Editor (my preference) using the Merge Columns button from the Add Column ribbon.
The other method would be using the Add Column button (e.g. on the Modeling ribbon) and writing the DAX formula e.g.
Year Region Key = [Year] & [Region]
Once you have a concatenated column added to both tables, use that to create the active relationship.

Filtering plots in power BI on through column names

I have the following tables
I have several tables on coal consumption, natural gas, .....
I want to have a power BI model that can allow viewing these data with years (x-axis) while filtering on countries.
I have transposed the data to have a column with years and countries on the columns. But I cannot filter on countries.
Another thing I have done is to unpivot all the data and have four columns (country, year, value, fuel type) but the problem is that I could not manage to create suitable relationships between the tables as there is no primary key.
I have thought on putting all the data fro the different energy sources in one table. But how can I manage to link it to more data per country at year as well.
Another thing I have done is to unpivot all the data and have four columns (country, year, value, fuel type)
This is totally the right approach.
The next step required in minimum is to combine all unpivotted tables vertically into one EnergyConsumption table. You can utilize Append Queries command in Power Query Editor, or Table.Combine function in M language.
Additionally, you should consider to create three tables: Years, Countries, and FuelTypes, which have unique values of the respective dimensions, and establish one to many relationship with EnergyConsumption table.

One-to-many relationship always changed into many-to-one by PowerBI

I have two tables from Azure SQL in PowerBI, using direct query:
EMP(empID PK)
contactInfo(contactID PK, empID FK, contactDetail)
which have an obvious one-to-many relationship from EMP.empID to contactInfo.empID. The foreign key constraint is successfully enforced.
However I can only create a many-to-one relationship (contactInfo.empID to EMP.empID) in PowerBI. If I ever try the opposite, PowerBI always automatically converts the relationship to many-to-one (by swapping the from and to column), which prevents me from creating visuals. Does PowerBI think the two are equivalent?
Update:
What I'm doing is to just create a table in PowerBI showing the join results of these two tables. The foreign key constraint is contactInfo.empID REFERENCES EMP.empID, which is many-to-one. That should not be a problem, I guess, since I can directly query the join using SQL.
Please also suggest if I should create the foreign key in the opposite direction.
More info on failure to create visual
The exact error message is:
Can't display the data because Power BI can't determine
the relationship between two or more fields.
Version: 2.43.4647.541 (PBIDesktop)
To reproduce the error:
DB schema is as follows:
What I want is a table in PowerBI showing contact and sales info of am employee, that is, joining all the four tables. The error will occur when VALUES of the table visual contains "empName, contactDetail, contactType, productName", however, error will NOT occur if I only include "empName, contactDetail, contactType" or "empName, productName". At first I thought the problem may lie in the relationship between contactInfo and emp, but it now seems to be more complicated. I guess it may be caused by multiple one-to-many relationships?
Expanding my comments to make an answer:
Root of the Problem
In your data model, a single employee can have multiple contacts and multiple sales. But, there's no way for Power BI to know which contactDetail corresponds to which productName, or vice versa (which it needs to know to display them together in a table).
Deeper Explanation
Let's say you have 1 emp row, that joins to 10 rows in the sales table, and 13 rows in the contactInfo table. In SQL, if you start from the emp row and outer join to the other 2 tables, you'll get back (1*10)*(1*13) rows (130 rows in total). Each row in the contactInfo table is repeated for each row in the sales table.
That repetition can be a problem if you do something like sum the sales and don't realize a single sales record is repeated 13 times but might be fine otherwise (e.g. if you just want a list of sales and all associated contacts).
Power BI vs. SQL
Power BI works slightly differently. Power BI is designed primarily to aggregate numbers, and then break them down by different attributes. E.g. sales by product. Sales by contact. Sales by day. In order to do this, Power BI needs to know 100% how to divide numbers up between the attributes on your table.
At this point, I'll note that your database diagram doesn't include any obvious metrics that you'd use Power BI to aggregate. However, Power BI doesn't know that. It behaves the same whether you have metrics to aggregate or not. (And failing all else, Power BI can always count your rows to make a metric.)
Let's say that you have a metric on your sales table called Amt Sold. If you bring in the empName, productName, and Amt Sold columns, Power BI will know exactly how to divide up Amt Sold between empName and ProductName. There's no problem.
Now add in contactDetail. Using your database diagram, Power BI has no way of knowing how an Amt Sold metric in the sales table relates to a given contactDetail. It might know that $100 belongs to empID 27. And that empID 27 corresponds to 3 records in the contactInfo table. But it has no way of knowing how to divide up the $100 between those 3 contacts.
In SQL, what you'd get is 3 contacts, each showing the $100 amount sold. But in Power BI, that would imply $300 was sold, which isn't the case. Even equally dividing the $100 up would be misleading. What if the $100 belonged entirely to 1 contact? So instead, Power BI shows the error you're seeing.
My Recommendations
If you can, I recommend changing your data model before your bring it in. Power BI works best with a single fact table, which would contain your metrics (like amount sold). You then join this fact table to as many lookup tables as you like (e.g. customer, product, etc.), directly. This allows you to slice & dice your metrics with any combination of attributes from any of the lookup tables. I would recommend checking out the star schema data model and the concept of lookup tables: powerpivotpro.com/2016/02/data-modeling-power-pivot-power-bi
At the very least, you would want to flatten your tables (i.e. merge the contactInfo and sales tables into a single table before importing them into your data model.
It may be that Power BI isn't the best tool for what you're trying to accomplish. If all you want is a table showing all sales & contact info for an employee, without any associated metrics, a regular reporting tool + SQL query might be a better way to go.
Side Note: You can't reverse a many:one relationship to get past this error. The emp table contains one row per empID. Both the contactInfo and sales tables contain multiple rows with the same empID. This means the emp table is necessarily the "one" side of the relationship to both those tables. You can't arbitrarily change that.