Hi @Koritala ,
Yes, you can implement basic data masking in Power BI Desktop using DAX, even if your dataset doesn’t have a unique "user id" or "email id" column. However, it’s important to note that this method will mask the data for all users the same way, since you can’t dynamically mask based on user context without user identifiers.
If you simply need to mask (obfuscate) certain columns such as names, phone numbers, or email addresses in your visuals, you can use DAX expressions to create masked versions of those fields. Here’s a simple example for masking a column called [Name] by showing only the first letter and replacing the rest with asterisks:
Masked Name =
LEFT([Name],1) & REPT("*", LEN([Name])-1)
You can create similar DAX columns for other PII data like phone numbers by replacing part of the number with asterisks. For example, to mask all digits except the last 2:
Masked Phone =
REPT("*", LEN([Phone])-2) & RIGHT([Phone],2)
Just create these calculated columns in Power BI Desktop and use them in your visuals instead of the original columns.
If you need more complex masking or want to apply masking dynamically based on user roles, you’ll need user identifiers and possibly implement Row Level Security (RLS) with DAX. But for static masking like above, DAX expressions will work regardless of the presence of user ID columns.
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