'Search' Splicer Option - Crashing on Online Dataset Connections Inconsistently

[Zivarus]

Hi all! I experienced a weird, inconsistent, and hard to trace issue today in production - 

For a couple of dropdown list filter visuals with the Search Function enabled, we encountered 'An unexpected exception occurred'. These visuals do have a large amount of items - one has a three column hierarchy relationship with only two populated columns, and the other has a two column hierarchy relationship. The populated columns have an average of 2000 entries per column. 

The odd thing was that this appeared to be a querying issue against the online database just for the 'Search' function - the list visual itself would not crash if the option was disabled. In addition, it did not appear to matter how much data was in the filtered list - I was able to replicate the visual crash issue by attempting to search a list with only a single entry in any column, immediately throwing the error once text was entered into the search box. 

This issue has appeared to resolve itself today and reoccur multiple times  - we have a regression dataset that we can reliably replicate the issue, and we cannot replicate the issue with a local dataset. The issue is only replicable via a connection to a published online dataset. The issue may be tied to traffic, as I have not replicated the issue in my own personal workspace or immediately after a refresh, but can replicate the issue shortly after a refresh has occurred, so I know it's not intrinsically tied with the base data. The issue is also intermittently present in datasets published a month ago, a week ago, yesterday, and today - does not seem to be tied with a specific time period either. 

See below for the error as copied from PBI Desktop - could not find anything in the trace logs, likely because the visual error isn't occurring locally on my desktop, but within the PBI server on Microsoft's end -  

Feedback Type:
Frown (Error)

Timestamp:
2023-02-15T23:18:41.2682367Z

Local Time:
2023-02-15T17:18:41.2682367-06:00

Session ID:
121f259a-deaa-4bde-b065-f08f75a2e149

Release:
December 2022

Product Version:
2.112.1161.0 (22.12) (x64)

Error Message:
An unexpected exception occurred. 
 
Technical Details: 
RootActivityId: a7007a23-fe93-4901-97e3-d07c2af8778a 
Date (UTC): 2/15/2023 11:08:23 PM

OS Version:
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19044.0 (x64 en-US)

CLR Version:
4.8 or later [Release Number = 528372]

Peak Virtual Memory:
71.4 GB

Private Memory:
1.04 GB

Peak Working Set:
1.28 GB

IE Version:
11.789.19041.0

User ID:
cd79e9e2-eb8d-4897-8b5a-e5b9c76dd0bb

Workbook Package Info:
1* - en-US, Query Groups: 0, fastCombine: Disabled, runBackgroundAnalysis: False.

Telemetry Enabled:
True

AS Live Connection:
True

Performance Trace Logs:
C:\Users\szieve\Microsoft\Power BI Desktop Store App\PerformanceTraces.zip

Enabled Preview Features:
PBI_enableWebView2
PBI_sparklines
PBI_scorecardVisual
PBI_fieldParametersSuperSwitch
PBI_horizontalFusion

Disabled Preview Features:
PBI_shapeMapVisualEnabled
PBI_SpanishLinguisticsEnabled
PBI_qnaLiveConnect
PBI_azureMapVisual
PBI_compositeModelsOverAS
PBI_b2bExternalDatasetSharing
PBI_enhancedTooltips
PQ_WebView2Connector
PBI_NlToDax
PBI_optimizeTabRibbon
PBI_relationshipEditPane

Disabled DirectQuery Options:
TreatHanaAsRelationalSource

Cloud:
GlobalCloud

DPI Scale:
250%

Supported Services:
Power BI

Formulas:


section Section1;

Here is a screenshot of the error in the regression instance that is still replicable reliably - 

Here is the error data for that visual as well - 

Activity ID: 37929575-026d-4ba7-a744-2c83f8d5cfe2
Request ID: d8ef45a1-be18-4267-92c1-9a6632d7b14c
Correlation ID: 3f8f69dc-895c-8063-80cc-4d3ccd727259
Time: Thu Feb 16 2023 16:20:16 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)
Service version: 13.0.20053.53
Client version: 2302.1.12237-train
Cluster URI: https://wabi-us-north-central-h-primary-redirect.analysis.windows.net/

Please let me know if there is anything I'm missing or need to try, as I am having a hard time tracing this to get a better idea of how this visual is breaking if the issue isn't consistent with dataset version, visual version, list count, or filters applied. 

Thanks for reading!

[Anonymous]

Hi @Zivarus 

Based on the above information, if you are a Power BI Pro licensee, you can create a support ticket for free and a dedicated Microsoft engineer will come to solve the problem for you.

It would be great if you continue to share in this issue to help others with similar problems after you know the root cause or solution.

The link of Power BI Support: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/

For how to create a support ticket, please refer to https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/How-to-create-a-support-ticket-in-Power-BI/ba-p/6830...

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao

[Zivarus]

Thank you @Anonymous!  

I have placed a ticket with Microsoft for this issue, and thankfully was able to do a browser trace while replicating the issue. 

I'll update this post if there is an update, let me know if I should share the traceback or any other information that could help. 

[Zivarus]

Hi all! Revisiting this after the fact since it has long been resolved - 

This was likely caused by a caching issue on Microsoft's end, but unsure what the root cause or resolution was, as this was fixed by a much higher up team other than support, and support wasn't able to replicate or trace due to a lot of this data being PHI. It was resolved within 2-3 weeks, and was very intermittent / hard to replicate. Beleived the root cause to be a splicer index issue causing the search function to bug out and crash the visual with large numbers of values being loaded into unconfigured sorting buckets.

Thanks for your help!