Sorting Months Name by calendar Order in Powerpivot Slicer

Sorting Months Name by calendar Order in Powerpivot Slicer

 When we add a column containing Month Name in Powerpivot Slicer fields it sort the data alphabetically like first (April, August, etc.) but we need the Month Name to be sorted Naturally

Like January, February, March….

There is no direct way to sort this you need to do workaround for slicers.

I am giving Example where I was using month Names from SQL query.

Sample Query that will fetch All MonthNames from Master database view spt_Values.

SELECT number, DATENAME(MONTH, '2014-' + CAST(number as varchar(2)) + '-1') monthname

FROM master..spt_values

WHERE Type = 'P' and number between 1 and 12

ORDER BY Number

We will insert this record in a temp table so that we can write a query to temp table

SELECT number, DATENAME(MONTH, '2014-' + CAST(number as varchar(2)) + '-1') monthname

 into #temp from  master.dbo.spt_values

WHERE Type = 'P' and number between 1 and 12

ORDER BY Number

Select * from #temp

Output

number            monthname

1          January

2          February

3          March

4          April

5          May

6          June

7          July

8          August

9          September

10         October

11         November

12         December

So if you will create a Slicer based on this Data you can produce the Issue you will have slicer sorted in alphabetical order like below.
Issue Screenshot

Solution: In order to sort in Natural Order you need to add a Prefix before your month name this is the only workaround that you can do with Slicer.

Note: Don't forget to add zero before 1,2….9 otherwise it will not sort your slicer as required.

So here is the SQL code to add prefix.

select case [MonthName] when 'January' then '01January'

when 'February' then '02February'

 when 'March' then '03March'

when 'April' then '04April'

when 'May' then '05May'

when 'June' then  '06June'

when 'July' then  '07July'

when 'August' then '08August'

when 'September' then '09September'

when 'October' then '10October'

when 'November' then '11November'

when 'December' then  '12December'

end [MonthName]

from #temp

Refresh your Report having MonthName Slicer and Sort from A to Z.The Slicer will get sorted in a Natural Sort from January to December as below.

Note : If you don't want to change anything in your sql code you can achieve the same result by following msdn blog-http://blogs.msdn.com/b/analysisservices/archive/2010/04/21/sorting-month-by-natural-sort-order.aspx