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.
Group by type splits the list into sections with a count on each, which is the quickest way to see the shape of a large model. The button then reads Flat to switch back.
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 in lineage — jump to the graph with this measure in view
Delete — remove it
Careful with Delete. Workbooks using that measure will lose it. Check Show in lineage first if you're unsure what depends on it.
Create a measure
Pick 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.
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.
Use display label 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.
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 sits the formula itself, with three view options for reading it different ways.
Aggregation — how the number is rolled up, and which field it runs over
Options — Total, Abs, Allow fanout and Use null in measure filter, for how the measure behaves in edge cases
Measure Filter — a condition built into the measure itself
That last one 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.
Save your changes to a measure
Changes aren't saved until you click Update. Cancel backs out and leaves the measure as it was.
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.