Google Analytics Connector - Importing data where values in some columns are null

[chrisbanton]

I am trying to pull data into PowerBI Desktop using the Google Analytics connector. My data includes the following fields:

Event Category

Event Action

Event Label

Total Events

Date

[Custom Dimension 1]

[Custom Dimension 2]

All this seems to work just fine except I am noticing some of my events are not being brought over (or are being removed) when I add custom dimension 2 to the query. If I remove custom dimension 2 all events show up as expected again. Unfortunately, I need to use these custom dimensions as filters for some of the events I want to display. Best as I can tell these dimensions are hit level dimensions and not all my events set values for them. I would have expected the column for custom dimension 2 would just say null if no value was specified but instead it seems to be removed.

Any idea if this is correct behavior (rows without defined values in a column cause the entire row to be filtered out of the dataset) / if there is any way around this other than start passing <blank> values into these custom dimensions with all events that don't set them explicitly during data collection (we can do that but it doesn't help me analyze the data I already have).

Thanks for your help.

[v-qiuyu-msft]

Hi @chrisbanton,

In Power BI desktop, the connector connect to Google Analytics rely on the Google Analytics Core Reporting API. The API may change in a way that affects the results of the queries we generate. Please refer to this article: Google Analytics connector for Power BI Desktop.

In your scenario, please try to update the desktop to the newest version. Also based on this article, I would suggest you post a thread here to discuss the custom dimension related to google-analytics-api.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[chrisbanton · Accepted solution]

Update: I tried running the same query through Googles query explorer tool and got the same results I am seeing with Power BI so it appears Power BI is using the API as designed and the API is filtering out the events where there are not values for all the custom dimensions specified.

Will need to restructure data going. 

Marking this as closed as it doesnt look like a POwer BI issue.