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avatorl
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

Accessing report level measures from an external tool. Is it possible?

Is there any way to access report level measures from an external tool? I understand that an external tool (e.g. ALM Toolkit, DAX Studio, Tabular Editor) requires a data model to connect, but maybe there is a way to connect 2 pbix files (one with data model and one with report level measures) at the same time?

7 REPLIES 7
sqaar__
Helper I
Helper I

@avatorl did you find and solution for your issue? I see this topic is very old, but I'm also struggling with same issue.
I have live connection with plenty of measures, which are based on datamart which for unknown reasons crashed, so I cant show implemented logic. 
Would be perfect if someone know how to show implemented logic from live connection.
I tried use DAX Studio, or Azure Data Studio, but both show just - "EXTERNALMEASURE("name", DOUBLE'  "name of datamart connection")

Thanks

Unfortunately, PBI doesn't seem to have enabled connectivity to report layer measures with external tools.
We have the same problem in my organization - We deliver the Centralized Data Model via Live Connection, which is used by many report creators that also create report level measures via PBIX. The problem is that creating bulk report level measures in the PBIX can become time consuming, and also you cannot do version control on it - if someone leaves and something breaks, you would literally have to go through all PBIXs and figure out what has been done there.

After researching a lot on this topic, the only work around I found was to PUSH the report measures to the Centralized Data Model and place them in a specific folder.
The method is described here:
https://www.elegantbi.com/post/reportlevelmeasures

Not ideal, but depending on your scenario, it should do.

Also a big issue in our SSAS setup - best tool so far is the extension tool Power BI helper:

To export RLM - go through three panes in the UI:

1. Model Analysis > Connect to model
2. Visualisation > Select PBIX
3. Documentation > Create Power BI file's documentation
Output is a HTM file with all objects used in the report including page/visual number and Report level measure DAX expressions

amitchandak
Super User
Super User

@avatorl , not sure on two pbix. But from July 2020, you can use external tool with power bi

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-july-2020-feature-summary/#_Launch_externa...

 

All tool should have latest version

avatorl
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

Thank you @amitchandak. I know about external tools and I used them before July 2020. New update only added ribbon buttons to eliminate a few clicks. But my question is about a report with live connection and report level measures. I want to access report level measures from an external tool.

Hello @avatorl ,

Did you try this external tool ?

   https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Power-BI-Sidetools-a-Free-External-Tool/ba-p/1331988 

Multiple instances can be launched from different reports

Regards

@DidierTerrien thanks, I'll look at the tool.

It will be really great if it will be possible to use external tools to edit measures stored separately from the datamodel (based on live connection to an external data model)

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