Question on PowerBI UI when i need to use a dimension with to many values

[Anonymous]

Hi,

i had this problem with Powerview in Excel 2013, and it maintains - unless i'm missing something.

Imagine that you have TotalSales by categories, and you have 20000 categories.

If you create a line chart (and much probably, with many other objects) you get an exclamation mark with a message warning that the number of categories shown is representative, because they are to many.

How can i solve this? Is there any practical way to deal with this?

I can only think of two possibilities:

- select a small number of categories on the categories filter (and eventually write a message on report to alert users to select other categories on filters)

- use a list with filter ("data segmentation"?) in the report itself, which is one of the visual objects provided, where i can select categories. Here, my problem is that i think the selections will be inconsistent between the various objects, because they don't refresh when you change on one place, and in this case they will be 3: categories on the PowerBI filters, on the Page's data segmentation, and in the graphics legend itself.

Any of these possibilities doesn't seem to solve the problem to 100%, i'm i missing something?

Regards

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous I would try to segment out only the portion of the 20000 categories that are relevant to what you are analyzing. For instance, I only care about the top 50 categories based on top sales, or lowest sales. I would think in terms of trying to add calculated columns that I can sort by in my model, then using those calculated columns to filter by in the report workspace. Then when you drop your category into a visual it will automatically only show the limited category set.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

yes, i could think of a top 25 categories, but how would you do it ? (my doubt here extends to the dax used)

Could be like a new column, named "Top Categories", with this = IF(totalSales >= 50000; 'S') and then draging this attribute to the object filters?

Regards

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous Actually, this is easier than I thought. Just use your total sales measure ( if you don't have one, create one). Use that as your visual level filter. set it to "Is greater than" and your value (or "is less than").

You can set up slicers on the side with that same filter by creating a table with your category and sales, apply the same filter, remove the sales, and change it to a slicer. Then the chart and slicer will work in unison.

[Anonymous]

Hi Eno1978, first of all thank you for your help.

I created a new report page with a line graph with:

- in legend, the categories

- in values # Sellers by Category (in reality, my doubt is *Sellers* with Category, not *Sales*... )

- so, these 2 are the visual filters and i've added a condition to only show sellers by category >= 8000

Then i've created a table with categories and # Sellers by Category, applied the same condition and changed it to a circular graph (is this the slicer you we're talking about?...) and ended up with this:

I think this is not precisely what you were talking about, namely your second paragraph. what is the slicer object? And if i "remove the sales", the filter still remains?

Another question is that i was missing something: the overall idea is # Sellers by Category (y-axis) and by week (x-axis).

Is this possible? I've added the week to the legend and ended up with this:

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Better...,

circular chart (above): Value with number of sellers (condition for >= 8000) and Categories

line chart: Value on Y-axis; categories in lines; and weeks on X-axis:

And if you select a category like electronics:

But also with error message...

Regards

[Seth_C_Bauer]

interesting... I wonder are you on the free version? This is the list of visualizations I see, and I highlited the slicer in this image... While you can certianly select certain areas like you are, the slicer allows you to choose multiple fields, etc.

[Anonymous]

Yes im using the free version, ok you are showing the data segmentation (don't know if the name in english is exactly this, im using the portuguese version).

with the circular one ou can also select multiple fields, using CTRL, but yes, using data segmentation object seems more logical.

Regards