How to deal with monthly data with multiple attributes

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,
I have several metrics that are updated monthly, but each metric has several attributes (owner, scope, data provider, etc.) Here's an example of a metric.

Metric: Stations Upgraded
Scope: Budget
Owner: Bill Blocks
Data Provider: Jesse James

Month	Actual	Goal	Baseline
Jan	15	15	5
Feb	18	20	5
Mar	24	25	5
Apr	31	30	5

I want to plot Actual and Goal and Baseline with Month in the x-Axis and the values in the y-axis. I also need to put all the metrics in one table and show the values. And I need to use slicers to sort by scope, owner, etc.

My problem is I can't find a suitable way to transform the data so I can use it. I initially tried making the metrics be columns and month be rows, but I wasn't able to sort by the other attributes. Then I tried making the month the columns and the metrics the rows, but not every metric has the same units (%, $, dec, etc.) and I couldn't change the data type by row. I decided to make every metric its own table, which works but it has SIGNIFICANTLY slowed down my computer (as I have over 20 metrics to track). Is there any way that I can deal with this data? If I could do something like data type by row, or do a relationship between column and row it would work. I'm open to any solutions and perhaps I have overlooked a very simple one. I really appreciate the help!

Thank you!

[Wimverh]

Create a metrics table: 

Metric	Scope	Owner	Budget
Stations Upgrade	Budget	Bill	Jesse
My second metric	Budget	Donald	Jesse

Add a column metric to your other table

Date	Metric	Actual	Goal	Baseline
1/1/2020	Stations Upgrade	15	15	5

Create a relation 1 to Many between the metric table and your data table.

[Anonymous]

thanks @Wimverh ,
If I do this, will I be able to select the data type for each metric? Metrics are not necesarily the same data type, some are % and others deciamls or currencies.

[Wimverh · Accepted solution]

You can solve this by using a switch and format function

* In the measures you probably have to change ";" to "," depending on the region you are working in

[Anonymous]

@Wimverh ,
I'm having trouble getting the final values to format correctly. It feels like I'm doing something wrong with the FORMAT function. For example, I'm not getting any "%" sign when using "Percent" format, but I am getting more digits to the right of the decimal point.


I checked that the relationship is correct (1:many) from the Metric to MetricValues table (single) and that the format code is numerical. Not sure what else to do, but this seems to be going in the right direction of solving my issue.

[Wimverh]

What results do you get one you create this measure, and add it in a table:

Testformatting = 
var myvalue = 0.05
var minswitch=2
return
SWITCH(minswitch,
1,FORMAT(myvalue,"Currency"),
2,FORMAT(myvalue,"Percent")
)

It should return 5.00 % when the variable minswitch = 2
when you change the variable to 1, then you should have as result 0.05 $ (depending on your regional settings) 

If the above code doesn't help you, I'll need a power bi file (please clear all sensitive data).

[Anonymous]

@Wimverh ,
I tried adding the format code to the same table as the values, and using the switch formula on that and it worked. It looks like the issue lies on the relationship, but I don't know why it wasn't working. I made sure the columns for the relationship had the same values. At any rate, this solved my issue. Thank you very much!

[parry2k]

@Anonymous underline problem is the structure of your data, you need to unpivot it, follow these steps:

- click transform data

- select month column, right-click and select unpivot other columns

- it will add two-column, attribute and value, rename column name as you like 

close and apply, pick any visual, let's say line graph

- drop month on x-axis

- drop attribute on legend

- drop value on value section

and you will have what you are looking for.

----

I would 💖 Kudos 🙂 if my solution helped. If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!

[Anonymous]

Thank you @parry2k ,
I have tried something like this before, but I couldn't it get it to work. Can you clarify what the table should look like before performing the unpivot? Thank you

[parry2k]

@Anonymous the output will look something like this

Month	Attribute	Value
Jan	Actual	15
Jan	Baseline	15
Jan	Goal	5
Feb	Actual	18
Feb	Baseline	20
Feb	Goal	5