SUMX, SUMMARIZE, and missing values

Question

I have a somewhat complicated scenario that I'm trying to build out in Excel using PowerPivot. We have sales pipeline items that each represent a sales opportunity and, associated with each of those pipelines, a number of events. I have history tables for both pipelines and events and would like to use them to construct a model of how a given sales executive's entire pipeline set has changed over time.

The result set from my SQL query might look like this:

pipeline_id	date_last_mod	pipeline_event_id	amount
P-01	1/1/2020	PE-01	100
P-02	1/1/2020	PE-02	500
P-02	1/2/2020
P-02	1/2/2020	PE-02	1000
P-03	1/1/2020	PE-03	200
P-03	3/1/2020	PE-03	200
P-03	4/1/2020	PE-04	300
P-03	5/1/2020	PE-03	400
P-03	5/15/2020	PE-03	300

I also have a date table with the usual fields. What I'm trying to produce is a PivotTable that looks like the following. You can see it takes the most recent 'amount' value of each pipeline event and sums those up as of the end of each month.

Year	Month	amount
2020	1	800
2020	2	800
2020	3	800
2020	4	1100
2020	5	1200

It seems like the solution should be something with SUMX and LASTNONBLANK. I have a measure that looks like this:

TestRev:=VAR MaxDate =
    MAX ( qryPipelineUS[date_last_mod] )
        RETURN
SUMX( ADDCOLUMNS( SUMMARIZE( qryPipelineUS, qryPipelineUS[pipeline_id], qryPipelineUS[pipeline_event_id] ), "temp",
CALCULATE (
                SUM ( qryPipelineUS[amount] ),
    LASTNONBLANK( qryPipelineUS[date_last_mod], CALCULATE( SUM( qryPipelineUS[amount] ) ) ),
                ALL( qryDateTable ),
                ALLEXCEPT( qryPipelineUS, qryPipelineUS[pipeline_event_id] ),
                qryPipelineUS[date_last_mod] <= MaxDate ) ), [temp] )

The problem with it seems to be that the SUMMARIZE function won't generate rows for pipeline_event_id's in months that don't have entries for them. Makes sense, really. Even when I try to do something with CROSSJOIN, I can generate a table with the ID's I need, but can't get it to generate data.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions as to how I should go about this. I've been beating my head against the problem for a couple weeks now and I'm not getting anywhere. Thanks in advance.

Alexis Olson Alexis Olson · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-26T17:18:16

The key here is to do your date calculations on the date table rather than your fact table and to remove date filters on your SUMMARIZE table.

Here's how I'd adjust your measure:

TestRev =
VAR MaxDate =
    MAX ( qryDateTable[Date] )
RETURN
    SUMX (
        ADDCOLUMNS (
            CALCULATETABLE (
                SUMMARIZE (
                    qryPipelineUS,
                    qryPipelineUS[pipeline_id],
                    qryPipelineUS[pipeline_event_id]
                ),
                ALL ( qryDateTable )
            ),
            "temp",
                CALCULATE (
                    LASTNONBLANKVALUE (
                        qryPipelineUS[date_last_mod],
                        CALCULATE ( SUM ( qryPipelineUS[amount] ) )
                    ),
                    qryDateTable[Date] <= MaxDate
                )
        ),
        [temp]
    )

Edit: In Excel, LASTNONBLANKVALUE is not recognized so you can use this expanded version:

Test =
VAR MaxDate = MAX ( qryDateTable[Date] )
RETURN
    SUMX (
        ADDCOLUMNS (
            CALCULATETABLE (
                SUMMARIZE (
                    qryPipelineUS,
                    qryPipelineUS[pipeline_id],
                    qryPipelineUS[pipeline_event_id]
                ),
                ALL ( qryDateTable )
            ),
            "temp",
                CALCULATE (
                    CALCULATE (
                        SUM ( qryPipelineUS[amount] ),
                        LASTNONBLANK (
                            qryPipelineUS[date_last_mod],
                            CALCULATE ( SUM ( qryPipelineUS[amount] ) )
                        )
                    ),
                    qryDateTable[Date] <= MaxDate
                )
        ),
        [temp]
    )

Note that the date filter is not included in the same internal CALCULATE expression as LASTNONBLANK. If you did that, the measure would not work the same way.

SUMX, SUMMARIZE, and missing values

1 Answers