The Advanced section

In the Advanced section, you can choose to sort one column by another column in the same table. A common use for this feature is to sort months by their dates, as opposed to alphabetically.

You can also categorize your data. This will control the default for how the data is displayed in your report. Most of the options are related to locations, and data categorized as an address or a continent will, by default, be displayed on a map.

Figure 5.10 – Advanced formatting options

This is only the default, as we will find out: you can always change the visual once it’s on the report.

Define quick measures

Measures are calculations that define business rules. It is not a business rule if we cannot define it mathematically. We don’t say “We need most of our customers to like us”; we say “We need a 90% or better score on all customer surveys returned.” We don’t say “We need to create reports for people to use”; we say “This report should be used at least once a week by 73.4% of managers in finance.”

There is a whole Excel-like language for creating measures. But the quick measures feature allows you to build calculations without knowing DAX.

The available calculations are organized into six categories:

• Aggregate within category
• Filters and baselines
• Time Intelligence
• Running Total
• Mathematical Operations
• Text

Start by right-clicking on a table or column in the Field pane to create a calculation. Select the calculation you want from the list, then drag and drop in the fields you want to base your calculation on, and then click OK. You’ve now created a measure.

Figure 5.11 – Creating a weighted average of gross profit by region weighted by cost

Quick measures are a great way to not only create business calculations but also learn DAX. You can look at the calculation once it is created and see how Power BI does it.