Change in SharePoint People Picker broke Power BI report

Anonymous · ‎10-24-2019

I have an integrated home-brew "system" that uses a SharePoint list for a technical change log system. I recently updated it so that three Pople Picker fields can each hold up to four names, with 1 minimum required.

CHanges to the form were easy, but then it broke my Flow, so I figured that out and now Flow and auto emails work fine. Now it has also broken a Power BI report I had that ran KPIs off of it. Nothing else really changed, so I assume it MUST be from the chnage and now that in some cases that field has multiple names separated by a semicolon.

Is there something I need to update in the query for PBI to get it retrieving data again?

dax · ‎10-24-2019

Hi Daryl_K,

According to your description, it seems that after you change something in sharepoint List, your report get error, right? I think this is casued by referrence error. Your M code didn't change and it still referred to the original field name or field value, which will cuase error in report. So you need to check the applied steps in Edit Queries to see where the error exist and change M code to correct one. Then the report will get the correct data and should work.

Best Regards,
Zoe Zhi

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Anonymous · ‎10-25-2019

Yes. The SharePoint People Picker field by default allows one name, but can be configured for multiple names.

The original relase of the SharePoint form this Power BI report pulls from allowed only one name in each People Picker, but I intentionally modified it to allow up to four. Needless to say this is a fundamental change that broke everything downstream, but I was able to fix everything else except the Power BI report.

Now the query errors on Refresh. I am not sure if Power BI can handle multiple names in these fields, or if the solution is to remove them from the query altogether.

Anonymous · ‎10-25-2019

Well, by just removing those columns that reference the People Picker fields in my query tables it is fixed and refreshes fine, but I am not sure if this is the solution I am seeking.

Is there any way to parse multiple names stacked in a single field?