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Create submetrics in the Power BI service

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APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

Metrics in Power BI let customers curate their metrics and track them against key business objectives, in a single pane. Submetrics make scorecards more readable by collecting related metrics together under a single parent metric. You can expand and collapse the parent metric. Submetrics can either be standalone values, unrelated to the parent value, or they can roll up to the parent value. Read about rollups later in this article.

Create a submetric

You can define one or more submetrics for a metric. Like their parent metrics, submetrics can be either connected or set manually. There are two entry points to create a submetric.

  1. Open a scorecard and select Edit.

    Screenshot of Select the Edit pencil to edit the scorecard.

  2. Select the metric you want to create a submetric for, and select Add submetric on top of the scorecard.

    Screenshot of Select the Add Submetric button.

    Or hover over the metric you want to create a submetric for, select More options (...) > New submetric.

    Screenshot of Select more options, then add submetric.

  3. Repeat the first step as needed to create more submetrics.

    Make sure you've selected the metric so you can create submetrics.

  4. See these articles for details on creating manual or connected metrics:

Create submetrics that roll up to the metric

You can also create rollup submetrics, whose values automatically aggregate up to a parent metric. These aggregations recalculate anytime the submetric values change, and capture the history. Rollups are a great way to keep a parent metric up to date without having it backed by a report connection. Rollups work when submetrics are manual or connected, so you can always roll up whatever the current value is, regardless of where it's coming from.

Get started creating rollups

First, make sure you're in edit mode.

  1. Select the pencil icon to enter inline editing of a metric.

    Screenshot showing a scorecard in edit mode.

  2. Next to the value and target, you see an indication of what type of metric it is:

    • Manual metric
    • Use submetrics
    • Connected to data

    Screenshot showing the types of metrics.

  3. When you choose rollup submetrics, you can choose the aggregation type:

    • SUM: a sum of the submetric values
    • AVERAGE: an average of the submetric values
    • MIN: reflects the lowest submetric value
    • MAX: reflects the largest submetric value

    Screenshot showing the types of rollup aggregations.

    The option you choose automatically calculates the appropriate value and shows it in either the Current value or Target value area. You can set up different rollup aggregation types on the current and target value, allowing for maximum flexibility.

    Screenshot showing a metric calculating the sum of its submetrics.

Preserve historical values

You may want to preserve historical values if you're switching metric type from connected to rollup type.

  1. In Edit mode for the scorecard, select More options (...) > See details next to the metric.

    Screenshot showing selecting More options, then See details.

  2. On the Connections tab, ensure that you turn off the toggle labeled Clear metric values when connecting to a new report.

    Screenshot showing scorecard data connection settings toggle.

Rollups considerations

  • Rollups take place from the day they're set up moving forward. They don't remove, recalculate, or override historical data with retroactive rollup values, in almost all scenarios.
  • One scenario where connected historical data is deleted is if the person creating the rollup is not the metric connection owner. To preserve the history, ensure the metric connection owner is the same person as the rollup creator.
  • If a scorecard author changes a metric from a rollup to a connected metric and they bring in the history via report connection, the report history overrides historical rollup values.
  • New rollup types calculate with the new aggregation moving forward, but don't replace the history.
  • Rollups always show the same aggregation value of all submetrics, regardless of metric level permissions. This means if person A only has view access to 3 out of 5 submetrics, they still see the same parent metric value as someone who has access to all submetrics.

Related content

More questions? Try the Power BI Community.