How to display discription for a hierarchy from a fixed column?

[SatyaVaitla]

Hi,

My SAP Project Management gives me a hierarchy of measures. The hierarchy is in numbers and can not be understood by users. The description of these numbers will be in a separate column.

In power BI the hierarchy is working for me but I would like to display the description in place of numbers during drill down of my graph. I can not replace the numbers with description in my original data because the hierarchy will be lost. To preserve the hierarchy, I need the numbers but during graph drill down, the description should be displayed instead of numbers (or in combination with numbers should also be OK)

Below is the typical data structure Description  (The header project and 4 levels form the hierarchy)

Description	Project	1level	2level	3level	4level	budget
Power Plant	EPC					1800
Civil	EPC	1				500
Buildings	EPC	1	1			300
Office	EPC	1	2	1		100
Signature Tower	EPC	1	3	2	1	100
Mechanical	EPC	2				500
Boiler	EPC	2	1			300
Generator	EPC	2	2	1		100
Turbine	EPC	2	3	2	1	100
Chimney	EPC	2	4	3	2	100
Electrical	EPC	3				800
Switch Yard	EPC	3	1			600
Transmission Line	EPC	3	2	1		500
Plant Area	EPC	3	3	2	1	100
Generation Area	EPC	3	4	3	2	100
Colony Area	EPC	3	5	4	3	100
Office Area	EPC	3	6	5	4	100

[Vicky_Song]

@SatyaVaitla, I tried but failed to understand the sample data you provided in your initial post: what is the relationship between descriptions and numbers in "level" columns? You mentioned that you would like to show both number and description, then what's the logic to combine these values? 

I asked because I need to firstly figure out your requirements and logic then to check what we can do in Power BI Desktop.

Thanks.

[Greg_Deckler]

Perhaps put Description in the Legend? Assuming this is some sort of bar or column chart...

[SatyaVaitla]

without descriptionmissing description

I finally able to upload my screen shots. The first one without selection of description as legend and the second one is same screen with description as legend. In the second screen shot i lost the hierarchy.

[Greg_Deckler]

OK, on second thought, how about using CONCATENATE to combine each of the levels with the description in 4 new columns and then just build the hierarchy manually in the visual by dragging these four new columns in to the axis portion of the chart?

[SatyaVaitla]

My reason to raise the request for this help is, power BI desktop team can provide a display column for hierarchies like this. Just like providing display label for each of the field.

In the absence of that kind of feature, this seemingly simple requiement is not easy to accomplish for the users.

SAP always uses cryptic numbers only for all the documents (again SAP language which is different from other softwares). So this simple functionality can make life easy to deal with hierarchies for SAP customers.

From the screen shots it is clear that Power BI Desktop is understanding the hierarchy and also knows particular row and can read description for that node. The only thing required from their side is providing option for display column!

This is an idea but i am not sure how i can explain it on ideas.

i hope the power bi team is reading!

[SatyaVaitla]

I thought of this.

In this case, in level one all1s should be replaced with 'civil'. and similarly all the other nodes and  levels. we need a strong ETL process to do this kind of transformation.

Our projects are typically with few thousands of WBS elements with upto 8 levles (and value of each project is around a billion dollars - we construct thermal power projects). so manually to transform in power bi desktop is difficult.

i am looking for the solution in self service BI.

If there is an easy way transformation you suggested in power BI desktop itself, it can be treated as a solution. any recommendations for this procedure?

Thanks and regards

[SatyaVaitla]

I thought gery color indicates inactive! now i dragged description into legend. What happend is i lost hierarchy and at project level itself it is showing lower level elements

I tried to paste screen shot but not accepted by this rich text box

[SatyaVaitla]

The legend is disabled for the bar graph (and for many other graphs - may be because of hierarchy). Even if legend works, there will be too many legends and difficult to identify right bar with legend - but still can be a solution to live with.

I also tired slicer as round about but slicer not accepting hierarchy (i voted with 3 for this idea today)