Do I really need a full year in my Date table?

Power BI Data Model
2

Hi @michellepace,

In most cases when you have a date field in your model, you will want to do some time intelligence calculations and for that type of analysis this is indeed a requirement.

Below an excerpt of this Microsoft article

To work with Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) time intelligence functions, there’s a prerequisite model requirement: You must have at least one date table in your model. A date table is a table that meets the following requirements:

  • It must have a column of data type date (or date/time )—known as the date column .
  • The date column must contain unique values.
  • The date column must not contain BLANKs.
  • The date column must not have any missing dates.
  • The date column must span full years. A year isn’t necessarily a calendar year (January-December).
  • The date table must be marked as a date table.

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I hope this is helpful.

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