Aliasing Values

[Anonymous]

I'm new to PBI - I've been using it for a month now as the last 9 years I've used Tableau extensively.  Today I was painfully trying to figure out a way to alias values in a column.  It seemed everything pointed to a calculated column using DAX.  But then it occurred to me that I can use the PBI group function even though I'm not grouping anything.  I just used it for the aliasing feature.

Is this a known common trick for aliasing or maybe there is a more straight forward way to alias values without calcs?  Or maybe using the group function takes a slight hit on performance?

[ALC9816]

You can double click at the Pills in Rows and Values and change the name for the current Viz.  The effects are local, not global.  

See video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_On_aX8DbJw&t=6s 

[Anonymous]

Idea submitted!

https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=d80cbebe-9744-eb11-8fed-281878e608e9

[lbendlin]

Please explain what you mean by aliasing.  In Power BI there are multiple ways to rename a column, either in Power Query, in the data model or just in the visual.

[Anonymous]

I'm not trying to rename the column.  I  know how to do that.  I'm trying to rename the values in the column.

[lbendlin]

I see.  Yeah, the group function is a bit iffy, especially with single group members. Sometimes you cannot rename the group to what you need, it will insist on being named like the single item.

Have you considered using a reference table?  You could add that to your data model and then just use the reference column instead of the original column.

[Anonymous]

I was able to use the group function this time for the single value members.  Hopefully I don't run into the issue you mentioned in the future  🤔.  I'm not a big fan of creating a lot of work for something trivial.  Tableau does this effortlessly.  PBI needs to improve on the simple things with the "self-service" business user in mind.

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous  In my experience you can always rename single values with Group By, the problem comes in when you need to use an 'other' group and rename the other group - it will always force some refernce at the end that it's other. 

Otherwise you can use Power Query to do this ,either in existing column or first Duplicate the column. It requires lots of 'replace values' steps or this trick: https://youtu.be/cOXNbaa_02U?t=59 Or a new Conditional Column would do the trick too. I know not quite self service intuitive, but Power BI has come a long way quickly. 

Definitely vote for your idea here so we can see the functionality in future releases: https://ideas.powerbi.com/ 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info Allison!