Exciting news for Power BI users! Writing DAX just got easier with visual-level calculations! This feature helps to largely simplify DAX. Writing DAX can be quite challenging to most beginners; however, with this visual level calculation feature introduced, the fear of DAX would be a thing of the past.

To enable this new feature, make sure you are on the Latest 2024 edition of Power BI, then go to File > Options > Options and Settings > Preview Features > Visual Calculations. You will have to restart Power BI to enable this feature. Once you restart Power BI, you will notice a new icon in the calculations group on the Home tab “New Calculation”.

How it works

This feature only works with a visual and not the whole data model, so it may be greyed out if you don’t click on a visual. With visual calculations we can reference any data element within the visual itself be it columns, measures, or even other calculations.

Adding a visual calculation

To use the visual calculation feature, firstly you have to select a visual (a chart or a table you want to work with) and then select the new calculation icon in the Home ribbon. This will open the edit mode for the visual calculation.

Using the formula bar, you can add a DAX calculation. For example, the visual contains sales amount and profit by month, to determine the cost, we can add a visual calculation by simply typing in this: 

With this, a new field is added to the visual as seen.

Interestingly, visual calculations are calculated based on Row-Context like a calculated column. Also, visual calculations are great because they do not take up space in your model instead, they are stored in the visual.

Edit or Hide fields.

To make changes or edit a previous calculation, once the visual calculation edit mode is up, you have to click on the calculation you want to edit and the DAX will appear in the formula bar. Now you can make changes to the calculation.

Recall that whatever calculation you create is added as a new column, sometimes you may not want to add this to your visual, you can hide this field by toggling on the eye icon in the field list.

You can also reorder the fields simply by dragging and dropping fields.

Exploring the default templates

Visual calculations provide default templates to make writing calculations a lot easier. You can explore these templates by clicking on the fx button and then choosing what template to work with:

You are not limited to these templates; your calculations can be added without depending on the template. Given that, the expression(s) you are referring to is within the visual just like in the example stated above.

Here’s an example of how the template works:

The built-in Versus Previous template function gives us the difference between the Current Month’s Profit and the Previous month’s profit on a new column within the visual. This column cannot be used anywhere else.

Compared with regular DAX

The DATEADD or PARALLELPERIOD functions are examples of time-intelligence functions that are usually used to calculate differences between periods. However, the Versus Previous template is a lot less complex. The image below shows a measure using the DATEADD function to compare periods, comparing this DAX function with the “versus previous” function, the DAX function may be a bit more difficult to read for beginners.

Comparing Performance?

Generally, visual calculations are much faster than measures since measures go back to the lowest level of the data (i.e. the source) but visual calculations don’t instead, they work within the visual.

Combining visual calculations with other DAX functions?

When combining visual calculations with other DAX functions, you have to be aware that not all DAX functions would be compatible with visual calculations. Similarly, not all visual calculations can be used within measures.

Limitations

As of the time this blog is written, here are the limitations of the visual calculations feature:

• Doesn’t support all native visuals for example combo charts and maps.
• Does not support field parameters.
• Number formatting is not so seamless but there is a way around it.
• For now, visual calculations cannot be transferred to other visual

Closing

The new feature is really exciting, and based on our exploration so far, it looks promising to simplify the hurdle faced when it comes to writing complex DAX. I hope they continue to develop this feature. This is just the beginning, try it and let us know what you think!