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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
4 years ago
Solved

SUMMARIZE returning errors (cannot convert to scalar value)

I have an employee directory that lists every employee in the company, along with the office they are assigned to. I need to provide a measure that tells us what percentage of our offices have 10 or more employees, but this is proving to be much more complicated than I anticipated. 

 

Trying to identify how many offices have 10 or more employees didn't work because I can't figure out how to count employees by office: 

# Offices with 10 or more employees =
if([# Active Employees]>=10,
DISTINCTCOUNT('Employee Directory'[Office - Assigned]),0)

This just returns a count of offices, because it's evaluating whether the whole company has 10 or more employees.

 

So I realized I probably need a summarized table where it's giving me each office and the employee count, but am getting consistent errors every time I try to use the GROUPBY or SUMMARIZE function: 

 

Employees per office =
SUMMARIZE('Employee Directory','Employee Directory'[Office - Assigned],
"# per office",
COUNT('Employee Directory'[EmployeeID]))

 

returns the error "The expression refers to multiple columns. Multiple columns cannot be converted to a scalar value". I've tried changing that last COUNT expression to simply using the measure "# Active Employees", and I get the same error. 

 

I also tried a GROUPBY: 

 

# employees by office =
GROUPBY('Employee Directory','Employee Directory'[Office - Assigned],
"# per office",sumx(CURRENTGROUP(),'Employee Directory'[# Active Employees]))

and got the same "scalar" error.
 

We only have 14 offices, 6 of which have 10 or more employees, so this isn't giant complex data. 

 

What am I missing here? Thank you!

DAX
groupby
SUMMARIZE
  • PaulOlding's avatar
    PaulOlding
    4 years ago

    The SUMMARIZE function returns a table, but measures must return scalar values.  That's why you get the error.

    Here's a measure to get the number of offices with more than 10 employees

    Offices >10 Employees = 
VAR _SelectedNumEmployees = 10
VAR _Result = 
COUNTROWS(
    FILTER(
        VALUES('Employee Directory'[Office - Assigned]),
        CALCULATE(COUNT('Employee Directory'[Employee ID])) > _SelectedNumEmployees
    )
)
RETURN
    _Result

     

    You could replace CALCULATE(COUNT('Employee Directory'[Employee ID])) in the above with a measure that counts number of employees.

4 Replies

  • Greg_Deckler's avatar
    Greg_Deckler
    Community Champion
    4 years ago

    Anonymous Are you creating a measure or a calculated column. You most likely want a measure.

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      4 years ago

      Greg_Deckler  I've tried both, get the same error each time: 

       

      This is when I tried it as a column. Same error. I don't understand why it thinks I'm referencing multiple columns. 

       

       

      • PaulOlding's avatar
        PaulOlding
        Solution Sage
        4 years ago

        The SUMMARIZE function returns a table, but measures must return scalar values.  That's why you get the error.

        Here's a measure to get the number of offices with more than 10 employees

        Offices >10 Employees = 
VAR _SelectedNumEmployees = 10
VAR _Result = 
COUNTROWS(
    FILTER(
        VALUES('Employee Directory'[Office - Assigned]),
        CALCULATE(COUNT('Employee Directory'[Employee ID])) > _SelectedNumEmployees
    )
)
RETURN
    _Result

         

        You could replace CALCULATE(COUNT('Employee Directory'[Employee ID])) in the above with a measure that counts number of employees.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    4 years ago

    PaulOlding  Aha, that worked, thank you so much!! I guess I need to learn more about the VAR function.