PowerBI expert Greg Deckler keeps pushing Microsoft to fix a long-time-ignored bug
I got to know Greg due to my Microsoft MVP program due diligence investigation last year. And I found the article below
At the beginning, I just feel this guy is very funny because his channel on Youtube is called Microsoft hates Greg. I also see the guy is very brave and respected because he is not a MSFT but he wanna Microsoft to fix something even if they cancelled his MVP, which title is pursued by a lot of Microsoft developers.
Greg Deckler’s Background
From Packt author page:
Greg Deckler is a 7-time Microsoft MVP for Data Platform and an active blogger and Power BI community member, having written over 6,000 solutions to community questions.
Greg has authored many books on Power BI, including Learn Power BI 1st and 2nd Editions, DAX Cookbook, Power BI Cookbook 2nd Edition and Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition.
Greg has also created several external tools for Power BI and regularly posts video content to his YouTube channels, Microsoft Hates Greg and DAX For Humans.
The PowerBI books he published:
- Power BI Cookbook, Third Edition
- Learn Power BI Audiobook
- Mastering Microsoft Power BI Second Edition
- The Definitive Guide to Power Query (M)
- Learn Power BI
- DAX Cookbook
- Microsoft Power BI Cookbook
I started to follow his Linkedin about one year ago. But his daily post on a PowerBI bug really surprised me. He keep posting a joke photo to push Microsoft fix this Power BI issue (Total measure calculation).
This daily action surprises me because I don’t believe there is a guy in the world, who can keep doing this for more than 10 years and he is totally volunteered instead of hired by Microsoft. If he did this when he was a MVP, I can suspect his purpose because a MVP is somewhat we should help Microsoft product team improve the product (as I understand).
However, he keep doing this after the cancellation of his MVP title. Then this story changes. I believe he does love PowerBI and hope this product can improve.
What’s the PowerBI bug
Greg had a proof video about this bug
And if this issue is only pointed out by Greg, it can be ignored by Power BI team reasonably. However, according to the vote of this issue on Microsoft ideas website, there are 1742 votes since 2018.
And there are some other posts showing this problem and teach others how to workaround it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/194c3yn/my_totals_are_wrong/
Summary
I’m not an expert of PowerBI. But this bug looks very easy to reproduce and I don’t see a reason PowerBI team doesn’t fix this. Although there looks to be a workaround with SUMX function, it’s not the real cure for this.
It’s not the first time I see Microsoft rejects fixing bugs. I used to work in Microsoft Dev Support team and I see a few reasonable bug fix requests were closed as “won’t fix” by Microsoft developer teams. Usually, if there is a workaround (no matter hard or easy), Microsoft dev will reject this bug. Dev support engineers are usually the guys who has to provide the workaround for this kind of shit.
If you have a connection to PowerBI product team (especially their Product owner), please help push fixing this and help Greg. You will be a life saver not only for Greg but also for all PowerBI users who uses measure total feature. Thank you.
