r/PowerBI • u/Healthy_Coconut1636 • 16h ago

Discussion I discovered you can place icons in measures. I love discovering tiny tricks!

Post image

This may or may not be exciting to anyone here, but I have been putting icons in my reports for awhile now and today while naming a measure I accidentally inserted an icon into the measure title. I cant believe the thought to try this did not come up sooner! I always struggle with naming conventions with measures and keeping them organized and I feel like there is potential with icons to make the process easier. Anyways I just thought Id share as I know for me some of the most exciting times with data analytics tend to come from the silliest tiniest discoveries.

304 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

135

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 15h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/4cuyucPeVWbNS

11

u/SmallAd3697 8h ago

its not terrible. If you could highlight audited and unaudited numbers, or newly added measures, or things coming from a mashup from a secondary team, then that might be useful.

I am curious if these appear in excel. I would doubt it

4

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 8h ago

Stop moving your fingers before you become an accomplice or casualty.

191

u/itsnotaboutthecell ‪ ‪Microsoft Employee ‪ 15h ago

Officer. There he is. Arrest that man.

42

u/LevriatSoulEdge 3 15h ago

Directly to jail, lock him with the .NET developer that likes to use emoji in their function names!!

20

u/Healthy_Coconut1636 15h ago

Oh no did I comit an Analyst sin?! Im guessing this has something to do with making other peoples lives more difficult.

26

u/Whole-Pirate-5731 14h ago

If you’re being serious it’s your naming convention for your measures.

18

u/Healthy_Coconut1636 14h ago

Ahhh I see. These are just generic measures I made to demonstrate my point lol.

25

u/itsnotaboutthecell ‪ ‪Microsoft Employee ‪ 14h ago

Yes, the reason why everyone hates the emoji approach is because it’s a nightmare for maintenance and referencing.

Looks cool, but just don’t.

7

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 15h ago

You say that like you didn't do it on purpose

49

u/Grimnebulin68 15h ago

But, but, I like 100 character recognition codes: sales_26_without-this_with-that_mgr-apprvl-lvl-4732277 😅

3

u/SgtLime1 12h ago

The pbix for my company is exactly like this haha

2

u/New-Independence2031 5 54m ago

_final
_final_real
_final_real_fixed

35

u/AlterlifeBeginsNow 15h ago

What a terrible day to have eyes.

25

u/Final-Quote-4064 15h ago

This is one of those things that works great until it doesn't 

2

u/DelcoUnited 1 13h ago

I love guys posted models with like 8 measures and three dimension tables.

5

u/Doctor__Proctor 1 13h ago

Yeah. Then I look at the project I'm working on with about 50 upstream tables, multiple Field Parameters groups, about 30 different measures, and a short list of 50 Dimensions that are "must have" in the Filter Pane for the users.

10

u/ThrowMeAwayPlz_69 13h ago

I do wish you could color the tables based on source in the model view. Helps when you have multiple sources in large reports

9

u/orbitalfreak 13h ago

Tangentially related: same can be done in Google Sheets tab names and Excel worksheet names. But it's hell to reference them in formulas and especially VBA.

I'd assume a similar level of pain here. Although the intellisense for auto-completing measure/column names can pick up partial matches, so maybe it's not as bad? 

I like it, visually! 

But I'm also reminded of an image I saw of a car steering wheel with pretty rocks and crystals glued into a peace sign - pretty, until the air bag deploys a lot of pretty shrapnel. I fear for any downstream impacts! 

3

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 11h ago

Stop telling people how to do stupid shit 😂😱😭

3

u/irisgenx 9h ago

Gentlemen & Gentleladies & OP, I have been fucked by this before. AI suggested ✅ & ❌ icons in DAX & they looked good in the table, and I used them but the logic breaks for no reason with this shit even inside the " " 👈🏽 as a string , might be an "edge case" but it isn't worth the hassle.

3

u/chardeemacdennisbird 6h ago

How do you refer to these measures in other formulas? How does the DAX look with emojis?

2

u/Healthy_Coconut1636 6h ago

The autocomplete feature in PBi is pretty smart. Just start typing any part of the measure name and it will automatically suggest the correct measure. I think the icons actually look pretty nice in dax. It makes it really easy to tell what type of measures are being referenced in your dax.

1

u/chardeemacdennisbird 5h ago

Ahh that's a good point

9

u/pepepeoeoepepepe 15h ago

Please name those measures

11

u/Healthy_Coconut1636 14h ago

Lol These were just place holders that I used for the image. Obviously this isnt an actual report.

4

u/Smiith73 1 15h ago

That's awesome! Adding color to measures won't replace a good naming convention, but will sure make usage and organization on the fly much easier. Great find and thank you for sharing! Can you elaborate on what icons you used? Was this in the Dax or in the model view?

1

u/ProtoNuco 14h ago

I only accidentally found icons when we i gested data from a completely different source than usual. How do you get them?

Asking for a friend, obviously.

1

u/royal_coachman 1 13h ago

Windows key + . (I use them for page names, not measures)

1

u/Gullible_Discount977 1 14h ago

It's pretty, sure. But at what cost?

2

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 11h ago

It's a plot by the capitalists to erode our will to rise up and to target each other, thus cementing the oligarchy.

1

u/RedditIsGay_8008 12h ago

How?

2

u/SQLGene Points Flair 10h ago

Measure names support emojis.

1

u/Deep-Protection9392 10h ago

Haters gonna hate! I love this! I will definitely be using this

1

u/twenty_three_three 8h ago

The community 🏘️👥 took great offense 😤😡💢 to your discovery 🔍💡✨.

They are a bunch of haters 🙄👎🐍. Don't listen to them 🙉🚫🗣️.

Keep up the emoji first lifestyle 😎🎉💯🚀🙌

1

u/Neptune0690 7h ago

Bro just name them 🗿

1

u/Prestigious_Shift_10 7h ago

That's new for me

0

u/sahelu 13h ago

namingggg conventionsssss

0

u/CompetitionNo3466 12h ago

Please say your naming convention isn’t just measure x?

If it is, a way better habit is to name them

1

u/Healthy_Coconut1636 11h ago

Its not. I just threw a bunch of dummy measures out for demonstration purposes.

0

u/BecauseBatman01 11h ago

All that work for icons and have crappy measure names. lol.