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AlexDantin's avatar
AlexDantin
Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
11 years ago
Solved

Does Power BI support sorting established in a data model?

We have several date dimensions in our data model. Within them, we have hierarchies created to flow from date to month to quarter to year. To avoid the alpha sort on Month and Quarter, we have enforc...
  • AlexDantin's avatar
    AlexDantin
    11 years ago

    Ok - after reviewing the tabular model, the sort is set correctly (and I am exploring the model in Desktop)

     

    BUT -

     

    Power BI doesn't seem to recognize hierarchies established in a tabular model. The sort order was set to support the hierarchy, not the attribute on its own, so we have to change the sort key.

     

    Closing this topic.

     

andre's avatar
andre
Icon for Memorable Member rankMemorable Member
11 years ago

sorry, I misunderstood your question.  The Sort By columns seem to work fine for me in Desktop (I just tried itagain just to make sure against an AS model in explore mode).  Are you saying that when you connect to your tabular model using Excel, sorting works, but when you are connecting to it using Desktop, sorting does not work?

AlexDantin's avatar
AlexDantin
Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
11 years ago
Correct. When I connect to the model in Excel, the date attribute is sorted per how it is designed in the model (in this case, Q# YYYY). In desktop Power BI, while I can "sort by" other dimensions selected for a particular visualization (like "Net Amt" or "# of whatever") it does not list the members in the same order (it just alpha sorts so all the Q1s across multiple years come first, then the Q2s, etc)
  • Greg_Deckler's avatar
    Greg_Deckler
    Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion
    11 years ago

    Are you certain that you are using Desktop and not Designer? I am using Desktop and went through the following excercise:

     

    Imported the following data:

    Name,Quarter,QuarterSort
    Thing1,Q1 2015,2015Q1
    Thing2,Q2 2015,2015Q2
    Thing3,Q3 2015,2015Q3
    Thing4,Q4 2015,2015Q4
    Thing5,Q1 2014,2014Q1
    Thing6,Q2 2014,2014Q2
    Thing7,Q3 2014,2014Q3
    Thing8,Q4 2014,2014Q4

     

    things1.png

     

    Note that there is NO visual indicator of sorting here but I clicked the "Quarter" column heading and it sorts this way (perhaps this is the issue??)

     

    Went back to data model, selected the Quarter column and changed Sort by column to QuarterSort and then went back to my report and it looked like this (without me touching anything):

     

    things2.png

    • andre's avatar
      andre
      Icon for Memorable Member rankMemorable Member
      11 years ago

      yes, sorting works for me too... If you explore your Tabular model and not import from in it should work.

      • AlexDantin's avatar
        AlexDantin
        Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
        11 years ago

        Ok - after reviewing the tabular model, the sort is set correctly (and I am exploring the model in Desktop)

         

        BUT -

         

        Power BI doesn't seem to recognize hierarchies established in a tabular model. The sort order was set to support the hierarchy, not the attribute on its own, so we have to change the sort key.

         

        Closing this topic.