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Year: 2018

Using Power BI to Report on Person Fields in SharePoint

Published January 30, 2018

This post is the second in a series exploring Power BI and complex data types in SharePoint. The first post explores working with multi-value columns. In this one, we’ll explore some of the nuances of working with person fields

Person fields in SharePoint are just a special case of the lookup field, and the Power BI SharePoint list connector is aware of them. As such, it provides helpers to make it relatively easy to get the person’s name. However, more information is also available. We’ll examine three approaches to extracting this information. It is worth noting that all SharePoint lists contain person fields for “Created By” and “Modified By”, and they are always available.

The List

Consider the following list that contains a multi-value choice field named Amenities:

The view displays the person’s name, although the column is a complex data type. There is more information than just the person’s name available behind it but this is unavailable to the SharePoint view. Power BI can however access this information in reports. Report requirements will ultimately dictate the best approach to extracting this information, but the good news is that there are several to choose from. In all cases the data first needs to be brought into Power BI Desktop.

Loading the Data

We first launch Power BI Desktop, select “Get Data” and then choose SharePoint Online list (if connecting to SharePoint Online) or SharePoint List (if using SharePoint Server). We are then prompted for the URL of the SharePoint Site. The dialog is titled SharePoint lists, but the value is actually the URL of the site, NOT the list itself. Once this is entered we are prompted for credentials if we haven’t connected to this site before. After entering credentials, we can select the list that we want to report on. In our case, it’s named “Listings”. We select it, and then click on the Edit button.

Once the data loads in, one of the first things that you’ll notice is that there are a lot of columns to choose from, and it’s a good idea to remove the data that you don’t need. In this case, we can remove the ContentTypeId column and everything to the right of it, with two important exceptions We want to keep the “FieldValuesAsText” and “Agent” columns (we’ll come back to that shortly). Remember, for our purposes here, we want to report on the person column, “Agent”. The simplest way to represent this data is with the person’s full name, as it is displayed in the SharePoint view. As noted above, it is also possible to use this data in a more sliceable, or structured way. Let’s start with the simplest.

Extracting the Full Name

One thing that you will notice right away is that he more simple column types like “Title” show their value directly in the Query editor. In our case, there are two fields related to Agent, the “AgentId” and “Agent” columns. The Agent ID column displays a number, and the “Agent” column displays a record data type. We will explore these columns, but if all we need is the user’s full name, we can use the highly useful “FieldValuesAsText” Column.

We scroll right and select the expander icon for the “FieldValuesAsText” column, then deselect all available fields except the Agent column.

We then select OK, and rename the column to “Agent Name”. The Full name of the Person is retrieved and used for the column. At this point, it’s ready to use in a report.

Linking to the User Information List

In many cases, the user name of the person may not be enough. As mentioned above, the Person Field is really just a lookup column that is automatically looking up data from a specific list. That list is the User Information list which is a hidden list that exists in the root site of every SharePoint site collection. This list gets populated automatically when the site collection is accessed. When Power BI loads a person column, it automatically creates a ColumnNameId column as well containing the ID value of the person field from this list. In our example, this is the “AgentId” column.

To leverage the data in this list it must first be loaded into the model. Following the same steps taken for loading the Listing data above, we select the “User Information List” which does get exposed to the Power BI Query editor. Once loaded, we remove all of the unnecessary columns from the query, being sure that we leave the ID column.

When ready, we select the “Close and Apply” button from the Query Editor Ribbon. At this point, we have two tables in the model, Listings and User Information List. We then select the relationship editor tab. The “AgentId” column in the Listings table is related to the “id” column un the User Information list table, and we establish this relationship by dragging one onto the other. Once established, we double click on the relationship line to set the value of “Cross filter direction” to “Both”.

We can now return to the design pane, add a table visual, and add columns from both tables. In such a way, we can show the agent’s name, email, phone, etc.

Expanding the Person Column

Although linking to the User Information List is powerful, and easier, and arguably better way to do the same thing is to use the automatically generated person column. This column is named the same as the original person column and contains a series of “Record” type values. The records in question are the corresponding records from the User Information List.

To access the data in this column, we click on the column expander and then select all of the columns that we will work with. Values from the related User Information List will be added to the table automatically.

This approach is clearly simpler than manually loading the entire User Information List, and only loads the records that are related. It will however likely result in a large amount of repeated data that the two table approach avoids. It is possible to achieve a two table solution with the person field using the technique outlined in my earlier article on working with multi-value fields, but the resultant table will still only contain related records. If it is necessary to show people regardless of whether or not there is a related record, then the manual approach is the only way.

Which approach is ultimately used will depend on the requirements of the report, but it is possible to reach deep into the person object in a SharePoint person field.

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Using Power BI to Report on Multi-Value SharePoint Fields

Published January 24, 2018

Power BI has direct support for reporting on SharePoint lists and documents whether SharePoint is on-premises or in the cloud. Getting at your data is relatively straightforward if you know the URL, but as I’ve written about before, SharePoint data can be idiosyncratic. Text and number fields work right away, but more complex data types require a little more thought, and this is certainly true of multi value fields.

Multi value fields are really SharePoint’s way of approximating the behavior of a one-to-many relationship of a relational database. SharePoint can store list-based data, and even though it has the concept of a lookup field, it is not a relational database. Chances are however that if we’re reporting on this type of field, we want it to behave as though it were. Fortunately, Power BI gives us several options for doing this.

The List

Consider the following list that contains a multi-value choice field named Amenities:

In the view, the different values are flattened, and displayed as a single value using a comma to separate them. How do we go about reporting on this data in Power BI? There’s no right answer, as it depends on the report requirements, but there are several options. In all cases the data first needs to be brought into Power BI Desktop.

Loading the Data

We first launch Power BI Desktop, select “Get Data” and then choose SharePoint Online list (if connecting to SharePoint Online) or SharePoint List (if using SharePoint Server). We are then prompted for the URL of the SharePoint Site. The dialog is titled SharePoint lists, but the value is actually the URL of the site, NOT the list itself. Once this is entered we are prompted for credentials if we haven’t connected to this site before. After entering credentials, we can select the list that we want to report on. In our case, it’s named “Listings”. We select it, and then click on the Edit button.

Once the data loads in, one of the first things that you’ll notice is that there are a lot of columns to choose from, and it’s a good idea to remove the data that you don’t need. In this case, we can remove the ContentTypeId column and everything to the right of it, with one important exception We want to keep the FieldValuesAsText column (we’ll come back to that shortly). Remember, for our purposes here, we want to report on the multi-value column, Amenities. The simplest way to represent this data is as a string of comma separated values, which is the same way it is shown in a SharePoint view. It is also possible to use this data in a more sliceable, or structured way. Let’s start with the simplest.

Extracting a Simple Text Field

If our report is to show all the amenities associated with a listing, then a simple text string will do the job. Examining the data in the Query Editor, you will notice that there are no values displayed for Amenity, the way that there is for simpler field types like “Sold” or “Asking Price”. Instead, each cell contains a “List Value”. Each of these Lists contains the Amenities values for each record and clicking on one will extract those values for that one item. However, of we want to extract the values for all items, so we need to expand the column by clicking on the expand icon in the column header.

We are then given two options, “Expand to New Rows” or “Extract Value”. To extract the values into a single value, we select “Extract Values”

We are then given the opportunity to choose a delimiter, and after that the values in the column are replace with simple text values.

Another way to accomplish this same thing is to use the FieldValuesAsText column (referenced above). The fields in this column contain a single record containing the textual values for all the complex data types in a SharePoint list. If you are doing reporting with SharePoint data in Power BI, FieldValuesAsText is your friend. To use it, we just click the expand icon in its column header, deselect all of the columns that we don’t need (which in our case is everything except Amenities) and click OK. We are returned the contents of the list in a comma separated string for each item.

At this point, we can report on the data.

We click on Close and Apply in the ribbon to return to the report canvas. We add a table visual, and add some of the fields like address, street number, and Amenities to it. You’ll see that the table looks much like it would in a SharePoint list. Next, we add a slicer to the report page, and use one of the other columns, like City. Clicking on a city will filter the table by that city as expected. Now, if we want to filter by Amenity, we can add the Amenity column to the slicer, but it won’t behave the way we want it to. Each combination of amenity values will be represented as a single value. We are unable to slice on a single value like “Garage”.

Flattened multi value field as slicer

To use discrete values for our multi-value field, we need to do a little more work in the Get Data (Power Query) interface.

Extracting Discrete Values from a Multi-Value Field

We follow the initial steps from the “Simple Text Value” section above, but when the expand icon is selected, we select “Expand to new rows” and NOT “Extract values”. When this is done, each row will be copied to accommodate all of the individual Amenity values. If there were 3 Amenity values, we wind up with three rows of identical values, but with each of the values for Amenity.

Expanding to new rows

We can now go to the design surface and add a table, and a slicer that uses the multi value column, and now we can filter on discrete values. This may be sufficient in many cases. However, if we create a measure that based on an aggregate value for the table (like COUNTROWS or SUM), the value will not be correct if there are no slicer values. It works with all of the duplicated rows.

Incorrect number of listings

Again, this approach may work in many situations, but for ultimate flexibility, we need a true one-to-many relationship. Luckily, Power Query gives us a few simple tools to do this.

Creating a One-to-Many Relationship

Again, we follow the initial steps from the “Simple Text Value” section above, but do not click on the expand icon in the Amenities column. A One-to-many relationship requires at least two tables, so now is the point where we need to add a second one. We do so by copying the first. We right click on the query in the Queries pane and select “Duplicate”.

This creates a second query identical to our first, which will load into another table. We can then give the new query a better name, like “Amenities” in our case. Next, we select the Id, and the Amenities columns, right click and select “Remove Other Columns”, and we are left with only the ID and Amenities columns. Now we select the expand icon and select “Expand to New Rows”.

We now go back to the original query and remove the Amenities column. The result is two tables, Listings and Amenities, with Listings containing the bulk of the information. We then click on Close and Apply in the ribbon to load the data into the model, and the relationships icon to take is to the relationship builder. We need to establish a relationship between the two tables, and we do so by clicking on the Id field in one table and dragging it to the Id field of the other. Finally, double click on the relationship line between the tables, and be sure to select “Both” for Cross Filter Direction – that way Amenity values can filter List values. If “Both” is selected, the directional arrow will point two ways.

Now, the same visuals from above can be added using the Amenity column from the second table as a slicer, and everything should work as expected. Listings will be filtered by the value, if no amenities are selected, the correct number of listings will be shown In the data card, and no duplication will appear in the table.

SharePoint multi-value columns are an attempt to replicate the capability of a relational database. With a few simple steps, Power BI can take SharePoint data, normalize it, and analyze it as if it were a true relational database.

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