Concatenate Alphabetically

[jdormer]

Hi, 

I am building a report on data pulled from a SharePoint task list. One of the fields is "Assigned To" which can have multiple values. This field is available in Power BI as a "record," which I expanded to get the field values as text. If two tasks have the same users in the "Assigned To" field, but not listed in the same order, those values are not recognized as being the same. For example, I could have the following two values to "Assigned To":

"Jane Doe; John Doe"

"John Doe; Jane Doe"

I would like these to be considered the same in my report. To that end, I've duplicated my table, keeping only the "Assigned To" field that I want to work with. I then split the field on the semicolon delimiter. Now, I'd like to concatenate the resultant values, sorted alphabetically, so that the values are the same regardless of the order they are entered. Is this possible?

If there is an alternative approach that would achieve the outcome I am looking for, I'd welcome other ideas. 

Thanks.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@jdormer,

Firstly, after your split your column, replace the space in your data with semicolon.

Secondly, merge the two columns using “Merge Columns” feature.

Thirdly, create a custom column using the following formula.

=Text.Combine(List.Sort(Text.Split(Text.From([Merged]), ";"),Order.Ascending),";")

For more details, please review this PBIX file.

Regards,

[jdormer]

@Anonymous thank you! To clarify, The result I am looking for is that both columns show as "Jane Doe; John Doe;" so the steps provided actually go a bit further than necessary for my use case. I was able to use the third formula you provided to achieve the result I desired. Thanks again!