Sorting on breakdown attribue of waterfall chart not working

[julianwissel]

I am using the new breakdown option on waterfall charts. Unfortunately sorting the breakdown dimension does not work. It is possible to select it for sorting but the breakdown elements willl still  ordered by size of the breakdown elements (in decreasing order).

Any idea?

Best regards

Julian

[v-haibl-msft]

@julianwissel

I am not very clear about your requirement. Could you please give a sample about it?

Best Regards,
Herbert

[julianwissel]

Sure, this picture should explain my problem much better. I have the following waterfall chart with breakdown by customer. I am sorting by customer (Sort by Kunde) - however my green bars with Customer A, B, C are not ordered alphabetically but by size of change (95 vs. 50 vs.  30.). I would expect that my chosen sort order is respected.

Best regards,

Julian

[v-haibl-msft]

@julianwissel

I can repro the same issue as you. I’ve reported it internally to Power BI Team: CRI 42699069
I’ll post here once I get any update about it.

Best Regards,
Herbert

[v-haibl-msft]

@julianwissel

This fix will be available in Aug 2017 version of Power BI Desktop.

Best Regards,
Herbert

[v-haibl-msft]

@julianwissel

Please note that the fix that we made for Aug 2017 version was to remove sort by breakdown from the options, because that is not supported by design. It was a bug to allow sorting by the breakdown to begin with. Sorting by break-down is not supported, and that is by design.

Best Regards,
Herbert

[jdobrzen]

Not being able to sort breakdown by design, makes breakdown by months look terrible.

[Anonymous]

I love the waterfall chart with the new breakdown feature that was introduced in July.   The waterfall chart with breakdown has so many phenomenal and awesome features. 

There are two needs that I have not figured out how to resolve with yet, so I still use Tableau for my waterfall chart.  But I am still looking for a solution.  Perhaps the solution is with DAX or PowerQuery

Issue#1:  Waterfall with Breakdown has great sorting features.  But, my largest Products by Sales might have a small "Breakdown", and hence would be lumped into 
"Other", which is a great logical assumption, but does not work for me.  My issue is that I need to always display my Products with the largest "Sales", even if they have a small "breakdown".  In other words, I need to sort 1st by Product Sales and 2nd by Breakdown. 

I solve this today in Tableau by first applying a calculation that produces a dynamic "Top N Category by Sales" and groups the rest into an "All Other" category.  The Waterfall is able to first sort by "Top Category by Sales" and then runs a 2nd sort by "Breakdown".  My suggestion is that it would be great if Power BI Waterfall with Breakdown could be sorted first by Sales and then second by Breakdown.  In the meantime, is there a calculation that could help me achieve this?

Issue#2. In Tableau, I can dynamically adjust the starting value for the Y Axis based on a percentage value.  For example:  if 2018 Start of Year sales are $10M, the Y-axis can be programmed to only display 25% of the Y-axis, in other words, it would only display from $7.5M to $10M.  This would be another good application for Power BI, but in the meantime, is there a calculation that could do this?

Final question:  what's the best way to share ideas/suggestions for advancements of Power BI with Micorsoft?

 Regards,

Lenzy

[Torrubias]

Hi,

I love the waterfall chart too! It is almost perfect but I need to sort by "Breakdown" instead of value. The clear example to understand the reason is a breakdown by period (done to understand what are the differences on each month). Currently It is shown in a weird order: March, April, August, ...). It leaves the chart almost unusable on this situation. I don't understand why "By design" someone decides to limit a cool functionality (lets us, the users, decide if we want a different visualization order).