PowerBI - Exchange - Inbox Categories

[mfrost_BCW]

Howdy,

My company utilises Outlook Categories to manage tasks. Some emails end up with multiple categories, i.e. Category 1: what type of work it is?, 2. Staff Category: Who is working on it. 

When i interogate the inbox, i can count the categories on an email, but when i look at the data in PBI, it only shows a single category. if i export the emails to csv from outlook, it shows all the individual categories on the each individual email, but within PBI it only gives me 1. 

Is there a way to show all categories on an email?

Thanks

Matt

[Anonymous]

Hi there

I'm having an issue accessing Categories within MS Exchange connector. I expanded 'ExtendedProperties' and found a 'Categories' column but it's only showing null. Am I doing this wrong? 

Jemma

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

@mfrost_BCW 

It looks like it repeats the email for each Category? Is there an ID field you can use to identify each email? 

I've done a video on Survey data that has a similar (though not identical) dilemna in terms of needing to create Dimension tables and reconcile responses to questions where the respondent can select multiple items (similar to tagging the same email with multiple categories). 

It might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAjAtbN1MAY 

[mfrost_BCW]

Hmmm, good thinking. There is an ID field, will see what i can shake out of the tree with that.

Thanks for the suggestion. Good video as well. 🙂

Matt

[AllisonKennedy]

Thanks! Keep us posted on how you get on and feel free @mention me in this or a new post if you're still struggling. 

[mfrost_BCW]

@AllisonKennedy, Thanks for the reply. i am connecting directly to exchange mailbox. Only 1 table, "Mail".

In Outlook it looks like this...

In Power Query it looks like...

Thanks

Matt

[AllisonKennedy]

@mfrost_BCW  What data source are you using? Does the Data view of Power BI only show the one category? If you can share some samples of your data view in Power BI and data model (relationships) that will help.