A measure is a number your organisation agrees on — revenue, orders, average order value. Defining it once here means every workbook uses the same one.
Before you start: open a semantic layer and go to Business Context → Measures. If you're new to this tab, read What Business Context is for first.
Find a measure in the list
Every measure shows its name with the formula underneath, so you can see what it does without opening it.
The toolbar above narrows things down when the list gets long.
Search matches on name. The type filter shows one kind at a time.
The view picker beside the type filter switches between Flat list and Group by type. Grouping splits the list into sections with a count on each, which is the quickest way to see the shape of a large model.
What you can do with a measure
The ⋮ menu at the end of each row:
Edit — open it
Duplicate — start a new measure from this one, which is usually faster than building a variant from scratch
Show on map — the same as the row's map glyph: jump to the Map with this measure's table in view
Show in lineage — jump to the graph with this measure in view
Remove — take it out of the semantic layer. It sits last, below a divider, so it is never the item you land on by accident.
To remove several at once, tick their rows. The list's column header then shows how many are selected, with Remove and a button to clear the selection.
Duplicate adds a copy of the measure and opens it. Give it a unique name, adjust its properties, then choose Update to save your changes. Your chosen name is kept when you edit other properties. Close or Cancel leaves the copy as it was created, and the original measure unchanged.
Careful with Remove. Workbooks using that measure will lose it. Check Show in lineage first if you're unsure what depends on it.
Create a measure
Pick Standard measure for an aggregation of a single field, Calculated measure to build from other measures or an expression, or Conditional measure when it should behave differently in different cases. Each choice in the menu has a line under it saying what it is for.
What a measure holds
Opening one shows everything that defines it.
Business Definition
This is the part that makes it business context rather than just a formula.
Display label is the first row under the name. Its Use display label switch lets you show a different name to the people reading reports. Switch it on and a field appears for the label you want them to see — handy when the internal name is technical, abbreviated, or simply not what the business calls it. The label replaces the measure's name in the Measures list, the Data Explorer and chart headers. Search still matches the name.
Description is where you write what the measure actually means. It's optional, and it's the single most useful thing you can add — it's what tells someone whether this is the number they want before they build a chart on it.
Tip: write the description for the person who didn't build the model. "Sales in the current month to date, excluding refunds" saves far more time than it takes to type.
How the measure is calculated
Below that is the Calculation section. Its heading carries Edit, which opens the formula editor. For a measure that aggregates one field, the section also holds the aggregation and field pickers, with the formula under them as a muted Preview and its three view options beside it. Other measures show the formula itself.
Calculation — how the number is rolled up, and which field it runs over
Format — how the number is shown, right after the calculation
Measure filter — a condition built into the measure itself
Options — Total, Abs, Allow fanout and Use null in measure filter, for how the measure behaves in edge cases. The section is folded until you open it, and opens by itself when one of them is set; each option says in a line what it does. Use null in measure filter applies to a Sum with a measure filter: a group with no matching rows shows blank instead of 0. It is unavailable until the measure has a filter
The measure filter is worth understanding. In this example the filter is Order Date Current — "Current MTD", and it's what makes the measure monthly. The filter is part of the definition, not something the report applies afterwards, so anyone using this measure gets month-to-date without having to know that.
To set a date filter, choose a date field, select Predefined period, then choose a period such as Current MTD. Selecting an option keeps the filter editor open so you can review the condition before creating or updating the measure. Predefined date, Relative date, and Relative date range offer other date conditions; choose the date or unit in their value dropdown. You can scroll longer dropdowns to reach an option while keeping the filter editor open.
Check the measure at every grain
A measure that looks right for one record can be wrong when totalled. Check its value for a single record and for the whole population.
Weighted values are row-level sums. Expected loss is the sum of each account's ARR times its own churn probability:
SUM(ARR × Probability). Written asSUM(ARR) × AVG(Probability), it is correct for one account and wrong for any group of them.Ratios need the same population. A measure compared with another, such as expected loss against ARR at risk, must use the same filter. Otherwise the ratio can exceed 100%.
Name the grain. A measure that is only meaningful at one point, such as the gap at the finish rather than the worst gap during a race, needs its own measure and a name that says so.
Targets and benchmarks belong in the layer. A 110% retention target or a 3× ratio benchmark is a constant measure, so a chart can draw it as a reference line and every app uses the same value.
After publishing, re-run the queries the apps on this layer depend on.
Save your changes to a measure
Changes aren't saved until you click Update. While you have changes, the panel says Not updated yet above its buttons, its title and the measure's row in the list carry a small dot, and Cancel backs out and leaves the measure as it was. Opening another item also discards them. With nothing changed, the button reads Close.
Like every other change in the editor, updating a measure saves to your working copy — it doesn't reach anyone else's workbooks until you publish. See How versioning works in the semantic layer.
Next: Continue with Get suggestions from your data.