To create a description, open the Power BI Desktop file containing the dataset and enable the FIELD PROPERTIES pane under the View tab of the Report view. In the following screenshot, the Internet Gross Sales measure is selected on the FIELDS List and a sentence is entered into the description box of the FIELD PROPERTIES pane:

FIELD PROPERTIES pane

Just like the preceding example with measures, selecting a table or a column in the FIELDS list will expose the name of this object and a description box in the FIELD PROPERTIES pane. Table and column descriptions can be valuable but measures are likely the best use case for this feature given the volume of measures in a dataset and the variety of calculations or logic they can contain.

Identify the most important measures in a dataset and apply concise, consistent descriptions using business-friendly terms. The set of measures described in the Base measures section of Chapter 10, Developing DAX Measures and Security Roles,would represent good candidates for descriptions as these measures are often reused in many other custom measures, such as date intelligence measures. For example, it's essential that the report author knows that the net sales measure includes discounts while the gross sales measure does not.

Although the Name field in the FIELD PROPERTIES pane can also be used to revise the names for measures, columns, and tables, this is rarely necessary as these changes can be implemented in other ways. Particularly for tables and columns, the Power Query Editor described in Chapter 8, Connecting to Sources and Transforming Data with M, should be used to define table and column names.

It's likely that a future release of Power BI Desktop will expose the FIELD PROPERTIES window to the Data view and/or the Relationships view as well. Additionally, other metadata properties may be added to the FIELD PROPERTIES pane, such as formatting and data categories, giving dataset designers a more centralized and robust means to configure dataset objects.