Date Ranges Without a Row for Each Date

[DaveAl]

Hello All,

I've got a client dataset that includes non-standard date groupings, and they're expressed as ranges with StartDate and EndDate. It's 10+ years worth of data, so I'd rather not generate a row for each day if possible. Example table:

Period	StartDate	EndDate
First	Jan 01, 01	Feb 01, 01
Second	Feb 02, 01	Mar 06, 01
Third	Mar 07, 01	Aug 13, 01
Fourth	Aug 14, 01	Jan 02, 02
Fifth	Jan 03, 02	March 08, 02
Sixth	March 09, 02	May 11, 02

What I'd like to be able to do is introduce a date slicer, so that if a person chooses a date within the described timeframe, it will only display that period. E.G. If a person selected August 16, 01 then they would be shown the Fourth period because it is between the start and end dates.

I'm really struggling to find a way to make that work. Is such a thing even possible, and if so will someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks a million!

[DaveAl · Accepted solution]

As I mentioned in the initial question, a calendar table is not an acceptable solution for my client. 

That said, I did figure it out myself. If anyone is looking to do something similar, you can use CALCULATE and FILTER([Date] >= [StartDate] && [Date] <= [EndDate]).

Thanks for all your help.

[v-xiaotang]

Hi @DaveAl 

Thanks for your solution 🙂

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _Tang

[v-xiaotang]

Hi @DaveAl 

As AlexisOlson  and smpa01 recommended, you do need a calendar table, then you can create a measure to get the period.

If you need more help, you can @ me. 

Is the above answer helpful? Could you accept the answer helpful as the solution? Thanks

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _Tang

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

[AlexisOlson]

A row per day (a calendar date dimension table) is the simplest solution. 10 years * 365 days/year is only a few thousand rows, which is tiny compared to what Power BI can handle. You typically want a calendar table for modeling purposes anyway.

[smpa01]

@DaveAl  the best way to deal with it, is to use a calendar table.

Bring axis (slicer, date values from-to) from calendar table. At the same time create a calculated colum in the calendar table that would assign the the "Period" classification from the above to table to there.

End users uses the values from calendar table and it would corrrectly slice the vize according to the Period (custom Period defined by you)