Forum Discussion
Hide/Show Column in Table Visual Matrix on Report
What things can't you do without "work arounds" that have caused you to walk away?
Not trying to be flip about it, but there were too many to count. You should understand that, initially, I really liked PBI and spent significant amounts of time and effort to learn it; so walking away wasn't done lightly.
If you want something, take for example the problem presented in this very thread- the thread is more than 3 years old! The problem, it seems, still is out there.
For another example, I just happened to receive (conincidelntally, I believe) a few hours after I have received this thread update, an update from another thread I was involved with. . That one is also more than 3 years old and despite the fact that it's marked as "Solved" it is still open and not solved! It may be entirely possible that this particular thread was the final straw for me: the fact that I could not just click an option to "prevent sorting" automatically was, and still is, absolutely astounding to me.
This is just off the top of my head. Just check in this forum and in other PBI-related forums and you'll see how many times the word "workaround" is being used. This isn't an emoji app on a cell phone - we should have to resort to tricks like that.
Everyone needs to make their own call if a product is right for them. But surely if there are too many issues for you to count, you should be able to mention, say just 2 more in addition to this thread. The one you posted above is not a work around. The default sort of every column is alpha numeric. There is a clearly defined and robust process to change the sort order - you simply specify the order you want, and then it will use that sort order. I'm not sure how else it could work. Power BU cannot just "know" the sort order you want.
I'm just trying to understand what it is that makes the tool unworkable for you.
I've been out of the loop for about two years, and since then a lot of water flowed under a lot of bridges, so I think I should be to be excused for not being able to come up with more examples.
But just to focus on the problem in that other thread: I always believed the product has to serve the user, not the other way around; so while I appreciate the fact that the "default sort of every column is alpha numeric" - the default is a problem for me as a user. So the product needs to either change the default to "not sorted", or offer a simple check-the-box option of "no sort". Please take look at Message 15 of that other thread and tell me if you sincerely believe that what is described there consititues "a clearly defined and robust process to change the sort order".
It's strange to me that, after all the time that has passed, I still feel greatly annoyed when I read that exchange...
So you stopped using Power BI 2 years ago - that was not clear in your post yesterday. It has progressed since then, for sure.
Regarding the sort order "issue", Power BI is a database. Databases (all databases) have no concept of row order. All data is loaded and stored in a table, then retrieved when needed. The order the data is stored and retrieved is not important and is not tracked. In fact Power BI stores the records in order to acheive high compression rates. That is why 100MB of source data can often be loaded into a Power BI database that is around 10MB (10x compression is common). If order of the data is important, then you need to load a key that indicates the order you want. That is how the sort order is managed in all databases including PBI.
I never said that a question/answer thread in a public forum was "the official" clearly defined process. Here is the official documentation. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-sort-by-column
It is also strange to me that you feel so annoyed by this given there is a simple, scalable, standardised solution.
I have watched this product develop from zero to where it is today over the last 5 years. Personally I did not use it for 2 years as I felt it was not mature enough. It was around October 2017 that I felt it was good enough to at least consider. It has had 150% additional development effort since then.
I'm not saying this product is right for you - I have no way of judging that. But you did just post to say that you walked away because of countless issues without qualifying that your assessment was 2 years old, and without providing details as to what those countless issues were/are. If there are still such "this product is unusable" issues, I would like to know what they are. I lend my weight to improving the product all the time, and if there are gaps that do not have focus, I'm more than willing to help. But if there are not countless issues that make the product unusable, I think people reading this threads should know that too.