Capture date when a flag is updated only

[Anonymous]

Hi.

I have three columns in a table; created_at, updated_at and flag. When a user gets created, both created_at and updated_at are the same value. The flag can be either 0 or 1; 0 if the user is a guest user and 1 if they are registered. A guest can later register and this flag is updated from 0 to 1. When they register, the updated_at is also updated to the date the user registers. 

Problem is, the updated_at property not only updates when a guest converts to a registered user, but also when the user edits anything in their profile. It's basically the property to show the user 'record' was modified somehow.

What I want is a measure/calculated column that captures the updated_at date ONLY as soon as the flag changes from 0 to 1; when the updated_at updates again, I don't want the new measure to have that. How would I do that?

[v-jingzhang · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

If you have all change history/log in data source table, we can consider using the date of the first flag '1' as the registered date for a registered user.  

If you only have latest updated data in data source table, we can not capture the registered date with Power BI. In Power BI, every refresh is a full refresh which reimports data from data sources and do transformations & calculations on these new data again. We cannot store a historical calcualtion result in the model. In this case, you would better consider adding a "registered_at" column in the data source table. This column captures a date when a user's flag turns from 0 to 1 to store his registered date and won't change later. 

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing
If this post helps, please Accept it as Solution to help other members find it.

[parry2k]

@Anonymous you cannot do that until you have a history/log of all the changes and also that history identifies what is changed. if the updated_at changes when any value in the record is changed, and there is no history/log, nothing can be done. You need to store the changes at the backend first (in your database) and then you can show updated_at for that specific use case. it is more of a backend data issue rather than power bi stuff.

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[Anonymous]

Hate to bump threads, but any help would be appreciated on this. Curently blocking a lot of progress from my side. 

[amitchandak]

@Anonymous , when do want this to happen, at the time of data load?

Or do you have a record of the user for each date with a flag ?

[Anonymous]

I have the Power BI in scheduled refresh, so every time the data is refreshed. 

The flag exists for all users; if it's 1 from the start, it means he registered immeditately, if it's 0 it means the user is in guest mode. Guest users who converted to registered users (flag 0 to 1) will have the new measure/column as a date while the users who already registered from the start will have it as null. 

Table looks something like this:

user_id	created_at	updated_at	flag
1	20/10/2021	20/10/2021	1
2	20/12/2021	null	0

Note again that the updated_at also updates when the user edits their info.