Passing a virtualized table from one measure to another measure variable

[FleetyBob]

Scenario:
Connected to a Live PowerBI dataset that I don't have access to edit.
Have several Narrative text blurbs that I want to display on various pages of a report, and I want them to be dynamic based on the month and year selected from a slicer.

I created a measure which works, and updates when the user changes the slicer month/year. 

SelectedPersonalSupportText = 
VAR textTable = 
DATATABLE(
    "Year", INTEGER,
    "Month Num", INTEGER,
    "Textstring1", STRING,
    "TextString2", STRING,
    { 
        {2023, 3, "Long text string1", "Long Text string2" },
        { 2023, 2, "long text string1 2", "Long Text string2 2"}
    }
)
VAR maxYear = YEAR([Max Date ALLSELECTED])
VAR maxMonth = MONTH([Max Date ALLSELECTED])
VAR filteredTable = 
        FILTER(textTable, [Month Num] = maxMonth && [Year] = maxYear)

RETURN

    IF(
        COUNTROWS(
            FILTER(
                textTable, 
                [Month Num] = maxMonth && [Year] = maxYear
            )
        ) = 1 ,
         MINX(filteredTable, [Textstring1]
        ), 
        "No analysis text available"
    )

What I would like to do is break the filtered DATATABLE() out into a seperate measure for ease of maintenance.  So that my measure to capture the text and get the value for each text box is a something like this.

Personal Support Text = 
VAR temptextTable =
DATATABLE(
    "Year", INTEGER,
    "Month Num", INTEGER,
    "Textstring", STRING,
    { 
        {2023, 3, "Personal Support slipped $1.316 million (-3.7%) for a total of $33.954 million. That too was the third best on record following 2021 and 2022. However, we are down $7 million on the Fiscal Year to date....." },
        { 2023, 2, "Someother text that we can replace with"}
    }
)
VAR maxYear = YEAR([Max Date ALLSELECTED])
VAR maxMonth = MONTH([Max Date ALLSELECTED])
VAR filtTable =  FILTER(temptextTable, [Month Num] = maxMonth && [Year] = maxYear)
RETURN
    filtTable



SelectedPersonalSupportText TEST = 
VAR _table = [Personal Support Text]

RETURN
IF(
    COUNTROWS(_table) = 1 ,
         MINX([_table], [Textstring]
        ), 
        "No analysis text available"
    )

If I copy the [Personal Support Text] measure into DAX Studio gives me the one row table as expected from the results, but trying to use this combo in the actual report results in a syntax/semantic error.

What gives? Thanks!

 

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@FleetyBob Unfortunately you cannot return a table for a measure. Measures only support returning scalar values. You could use TOCSV as the return for your measure and then use this FROMCSV but it may be more hassle than its worth: FROMCSV - Microsoft Power BI Community

[FleetyBob]

Thank you Greg for the response. While I knew you couldn't return a table through a measure to a visual I guess I was optimistacally incorrect that I could use a meaure as a Global variable that could be passed to several other measures. Back to the drawing board. I will look into the TOCSV/FROMCSV as a possible solution.

Cheers!