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Reporting & Writeback Matrix Docs
Reporting & Writeback Matrix Docs
  • Introduction to Inforiver
    • Why Inforiver
    • Get Started
      • Installing Inforiver for yourself
      • Installing from AppSource
      • Installing Inforiver for your organization (Org visual)
      • Inforiver Writeback Matrix pre-requisites
        • Whitelist Inforiver IPs
        • Admin consent for Inforiver's Entra ID
          • Basic consent
          • Full admin consent
      • Inforiver Customer Portal
        • Billing Admin
          • Update Profile
          • Update Subscriptions
        • License Admin
      • Licensing
        • License renewal
      • Registering Inforiver on Azure AD (Entra ID)
  • Working with Inforiver
    • 1. Build your first Inforiver report
    • 2. Displaying information
      • Report interface
      • Layout options
      • Templates
      • Basic formatting
        • Number formatting
        • Cell, header & value formatting
        • Totals & subtotals
        • Insert blank rows
      • Basic inline charts
    • 3. Basic interactions
      • Explore & filter data
        • Search & Filter
        • Explorer
        • Top N + others
      • Sort & reorder data
      • Show/hide values
      • Manage column widths
      • Manage hierarchies
      • Create visual hierarchies
      • Pin rows & columns
      • Blend measures
      • Dynamic measure headers
      • Context menus
        • Column gripper
        • Row gripper
      • Actions
        • Rails
        • Toolbar options
        • Keyboard shortcuts
        • Reset
    • 4. Adding business logic and formulae
      • Insert calculated rows
        • Template rows
      • Insert calculated columns
      • Insert manual input rows
      • Insert manual input columns
        • Number
        • Dropdown
          • Dropdown options from semantic models
          • Lookup visuals for dropdowns
        • Text, checkbox & date
        • Writeback Matrix features
      • Invert sign
      • Editing cells
      • Quick formula
      • Visual column inside visual measures
      • Manage inserted rows
      • Manage inserted measures & columns
      • Pivot data
      • Insert image URLs
    • 6. Working with charts
      • Sparkline charts
      • Stacked charts
      • Bullet charts and clustered bar charts
      • Waterfall charts
      • Bar and pin charts
      • Change/deviation charts
    • 5. Conditional formatting
      • One-click options
      • Create rule
        • Rules (If conditions)
        • Color scale & data bars
        • Classification
        • Ranking
      • Manage rules
    • 7. Planning, budgeting & forecasting
      • What-if analysis & simulations
      • Goal Seek
      • Scenarios (Writeback Matrix only)
      • Budgeting & allocations
      • Forecasting
        • Date rollover and extending forecasts
        • Editing forecasts and reforecasting
        • Autoclose forecasts
        • Distribute deficit
        • Row level forecast
        • User Access Control
        • Common Scenarios
          • Forecast using a Blank Template
          • Forecast using Existing Data
          • Adding Forecasts for Periods unavailable in the model
          • Creating daily and weekly forecasts
      • Set version
    • 8. Paginated reporting
      • Pagination
      • Header & footer
        • Text
        • Images
        • Charts
        • KPI cards
      • Report layouts (Report+)
      • Display and themes
    • 9. Commenting and collaboration
      • Notes
      • Comments
        • Data-level comments
        • Assign & track tasks
        • Track changes
        • Report-level comments
        • Comment settings
    • 10. Exporting reports
      • Export to PDF & Excel
        • Excel export - operational boundaries
      • Ad-hoc emails
      • Snapshot (Writeback Matrix only)
        • Comparing snapshots
    • 11. Scheduling reports
      • Create new subscription
        • Select a report
        • Set subscription frequency
        • Select destination(s)
          • Email
          • OneDrive
          • Microsoft Teams
          • SharePoint
        • Review & save subscription
      • Manage your subscriptions
      • Administration
    • 12. Data writeback
      • Settings
        • General Settings
        • Data Settings
        • Destination Settings
        • Writeback security settings
        • Writeback time-out & batch size settings
        • Advanced Settings
      • Destinations
        • Azure SQL (Managed DB)
        • Azure SQL
        • Microsoft SQL Server
        • Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool
        • Azure Data Lake Storage
        • Databricks
        • Snowflake
          • Setting up Snowflake OAuth
        • Amazon Redshift
        • BigQuery
        • SingleStore
        • SAP HANA
        • Oracle
        • PostgreSQL
        • MySQL
        • OneDrive
        • SharePoint
        • Dataverse
        • Fabric Warehouse
        • Fabric lakehouse
        • Fabric SQL
        • URL as destination
      • Logs
      • Reading mode
    • 13. Context awareness
    • 14. Manage aggregation
      • Row aggregation
      • Column aggregation
    • 15. Managing Inforiver Writeback Matrix visuals
      • Inforiver deployments in Power BI pipeline setup
      • Duplicating Writeback Matrix Visuals - Best Practices
      • Recommended practices while working with Power BI desktop
    • 16. Approval workflows
    • 17. Collaborative adjustment workflows
    • 18. Variables
      • Variable types
        • Number
        • Select
        • Text
        • Date
        • Date range
        • Boolean
        • Button
      • Variable bookmarks
    • 19. Leveraging Power BI bookmarks
  • Admin Console
    • Manage Profile
    • User management
      • User Roles and Permissions
      • Create custom roles and policies
    • Settings
      • General
      • Generate builds - on prem
      • Forecast
      • Holidays
      • API token
      • Writeback
      • Managed DB
      • Assets
    • Onboarding actions
    • Writeback
  • Display settings
    • General settings
    • Hierarchy settings
    • Number settings
    • Miscellaneous settings
    • On-load scripting
  • Formula syntax
    • Conditional statements
      • IF
      • IFNA
      • SWITCH
      • FILTERIF
    • Logical functions
      • AND
      • IN
      • ISBLANK
      • ISEMPTY
      • ISNUMBER
      • NOT
      • OR
      • XOR
    • Math functions
      • ABS
      • AVERAGE
      • AVERAGEEXNEG
      • AVERAGEEXZERO
      • AVERAGEEXZERONEG
      • AVERAGEIF
      • CEILING
      • COUNT
      • COUNTIF
      • DIVIDE
      • EVEN
      • EXP
      • FLOOR
      • INDEXOF
      • LOG
      • ODD
      • MAX
      • MIN
      • NORMDIST
      • NORMSDIST
      • NORMINV
      • NORMSINV
      • PCT
      • POWER
      • RAND
      • RANDBETWEEN
      • ROUND
      • SORT
      • SQRT
      • SUM
      • PMT
    • Text formatting functions
      • CONCATENATE
      • HYPERLINK
      • LEFT
      • LOWER
      • MID
      • PROPER
      • REPLACE
      • REPT
      • RIGHT
      • TEXT
      • TRIM
      • UPPER
      • VALUE
    • Date functions
      • DATEADD
      • DATEDIFF
      • DAY
      • DATE
      • DATE.SET
      • DATE.FORMAT
      • SOWEEK
      • SOMONTH
      • SOQTR
      • SOYEAR
      • EOWEEK
      • EOMONTH
      • EOQTR
      • EOYEAR
      • NETWORKDAYS
      • ADDDAYS
      • ADDWEEKS
      • ADDMONTHS
      • ADDQTRS
      • ADDYEARS
      • FROMEXCELDATE
      • MONTH
      • NOW
      • PERIOD_RANGE
      • TODAY
      • TOEXCELDATE
      • YEAR
    • Time intelligence functions
      • AGGREGATE
      • FILTER
      • COLUMN_PERIOD
      • LASTNDAY
      • LASTNMONTH
      • LASTNQTR
      • LASTNYEAR
      • MONTHPERIOD
      • MOVINGAVERAGE
      • MOVINGSUM
      • MTD
      • NEXTNDAY
      • NEXTNMONTH
      • NEXTNQTR
      • NEXTNYEAR
      • QTD
      • QTRPERIOD
      • SHIFT
      • TOTALYTD
      • TOTALQTD
      • TOTALMTD
      • VALUEAT
      • YEARPERIOD
      • YTD
    • Other operators
    • Identifiers
      • CLOSEDPERIOD
      • COLUMN.DATE
      • COLUMN.PARENT
      • COLUMNS
      • CURRENT_PERIOD
      • DESCENDANTS
      • FORECAST.CLOSED_END
      • FORECAST.CLOSED_START
      • FORECAST.OPEN_END
      • FORECAST.OPEN_START
      • GROUP INDEX
      • HAS
      • HAS_ALL
      • HAS_SOME
      • LEAVES
      • LEVEL
      • LOGGEDIN_EMAIL
      • LOGGEDIN_NAME
      • MATCH
      • MAXDATE
      • MEMBERS
      • MINDATE
      • RELATIVE
      • RELATIVE_COLUMN
      • ROW.PARENT
      • ROW.LABEL
    • Scripting functions
      • DISPLAYTOAST
      • EXPORT
      • LAYOUT
      • SETCFRULE
      • SETFILTER
      • SETFILTERBYINDEX
      • SETVISIBILITY
      • SHOWBETWEENPERIOD
      • SHOWCLOSEDFORECAST
      • TOPN
      • DISPLAY SETTINGS
        • SETBLANKLABEL
        • SETSUPPRESSZEROS
        • SETRAGGEDHIERARCHY
        • SEPARATOR
        • SETCOMBINECOLUMNHEADER
        • SEMANTICFORMAT
        • SHOWNULLAS
        • SHOWZEROAS
        • SINGLECHILD
    • Miscellaneous functions
      • FETCH
      • LOOKUP
    • Measure/Column selection functions
      • GETCOLBETWEENPERIODS
      • GETMEASURE
  • Advanced topics
    • Audit log
    • Backup & restore report config
    • Enterprise themes
    • PowerPoint integration
    • Drill down and roll up in performance mode
  • Infobridge
    • 1. Create bridge
    • 2. Add source to bridge
    • 3. Bridge Interface
    • 4. Manage queries
      • Query transformations
        • Append
        • Join
        • Duplicate
    • 4. Manage sources
    • 5. Insert rows from bridge
    • 6. Insert measure from bridge
    • 7. Manage Integration of visuals
    • 8. Manage Bridges
    • 9. Data transformations
      • Pivot table
      • Group by
      • Add Column
      • Pivot column
      • Rename column
      • Find and Replace
      • Remove measure
      • Filter rows
      • Sort
      • Text functions
      • Unnest
      • Round
      • Extract Comments
      • Import and export
    • 10. Integrating forecasts
    • 11. Collaborative adjustments
  • Accessibility shortcut keys
  • Inforiver Reporting Matrix FAQs
  • Inforiver Writeback Matrix FAQs
  • Video tutorials
  • Resources
  • Release Notes
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix May 2025 - v4.4.3
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix April 2025 - v4.4.2
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix April 2025 - v4.4.
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix March 2025 - v4.3 - Time series formulae
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix - March 2025 - v4.2
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix March 2025 - v4.1
    • Inforiver Reporting Matrix March 2025 - V3.3.3 -New formatting and export options
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix Feb 2025 - v4.0 - User permissions, High-performance mode, Input rules
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix January 2025 - v3.9 - Fabric support, upgraded variables interface
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix December 2024- v3.8 - Improved Scheduler Performance & Other Enhancements
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix December 2024 - v3.7 - Merge rows, new rounding functions & More
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix November 2024 - v3.6.2 - Import from Google Sheets & More
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix October 2024 - v3.6 - Approval Workflows & Other Enhancements
    • Inforiver Writeback Matrix October 2024 - v3.5 - Lookup visuals & more
    • Inforiver Reporting Matrix Nov 2024 - v3.3 - Variables
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On this page
  • Visual IDs
  • Duplicate visuals
  • Common ways of duplicating visuals
  • What happens with duplicate visuals?
  • How do we avoid duplicate visuals?
  • Detaching visuals
  • When to detach visuals

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  1. Working with Inforiver
  2. 15. Managing Inforiver Writeback Matrix visuals

Duplicating Writeback Matrix Visuals - Best Practices

PreviousInforiver deployments in Power BI pipeline setupNextRecommended practices while working with Power BI desktop

Last updated 6 months ago

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When working on a specific Inforiver visual, you might sometimes receive the following notification, warning you about a duplicate visual.

In this section, we will define duplicate visuals, discuss their causes, how to avoid them, and how to detach visuals in the event of intentional or accidental duplications.

Let us first begin with understanding visual IDs.

Visual IDs

When you load an Inforiver visual from scratch on your desktop, it will be assigned a unique Visual ID. This can be seen and accessed from your user profile.

When you save this .pbix file with a name, say, Inforiver Datasets_new.pbix and publish it to the service, this visual will retain the same Visual ID as the desktop version, as shown in the image below. Let's refer to it as VISUAL_ID1.

The visual ID is significant because all your input budget numbers, text, dropdowns and checkboxes, Inforiver input fields' data such as comments, snapshots, scenarios, forecasts, simulations, and other Inforiver visual metadata are stored in the backend cache with VISUAL_ID1 tagged as the identifier.

If someone changes a budget number on a visual in service, you will see the same changes on the desktop report too. This is because the visuals on the desktop and the service, both have the same VISUAL_ID1 as their ID which points to the same cache memory space, containing all the input data and visual metadata.

Duplicate visuals

Report developers may often need to replicate the structure and design across multiple visuals. So they might duplicate the visuals to achieve this.

Common ways of duplicating visuals

A visual is said to be duplicated in the following cases:

  1. Publishing the same report to different workspaces in the Power BI service.

When you publish the same report to different workspaces, they share the same visual ID.

  1. Saving the report with a different file name and then publishing it. For example, saving the Inforiver Datasets_new.pbix file with a new name, such as Inforiver Datasets_new_V2.pbix, and then publishing it to the service, results in the same visual ID for both the visuals.

Note that, each page in a Power BI report has a unique URL, which is a composite key of Report Name + Report Page.

Since these two reports have the same visual IDs, their corresponding page URLs will be the same (Page 1 -> Page 1, Page 2 -> Page 2, and so on), and Inforiver flags this as a duplicate visual despite changing the .pbix file name.

  1. Duplicating a page/tab in a report and republishing it in place of the old one: Since each page/tab in a report has a unique URL ID, when you duplicate a page or a tab within a report, these pages share the same visual IDs.

So, if you delete the old page/tab in your desktop and republish with the duplicated page/tab, Inforiver will flag this as duplicate.

Since duplicate detection works based on Power BI report URLs, it is obvious that Inforiver can detect duplication only on Power BI service.

What happens with duplicate visuals?

As previously stated, when a specific visual is copied, the new visual retains the same visual ID as the old one. As a result, items such as forecasts, scenarios, comments, and other metadata from both new and old visuals share the same backend cache.

Any changes made to these items will affect both the original and the copied visuals simultaneously. These include,

-> Input fields-related data such as Comments, Snapshots, Scenarios

-> Forecasts

-> Simulations

-> Data Input fields such as dropdowns, checkboxes, and text/numeric input - both, the structure, and values

-> Inserted rows such as static rows, calculated rows and row hierarchies

-> Writeback destinations and configurations

All the above will be synced between the visuals.

Note: Other elements such as Formulas, Variance columns, Formatting changes, Show/Hide columns, etc. are not synced between duplicate visuals.

How do we avoid duplicate visuals?

To prevent multiple visuals from being impacted at the same time, due to duplication, follow these best practices when copying reports or pages in Power BI: 1. When you download a visual from the Power BI service to your desktop and make changes, save the file with the same name it was downloaded with, instead of using a different name. 2. When publishing it, replace the old report with the new one. Click "Replace" when prompted by Power BI (the prompt appears because they have the same name). 3. Avoid duplicating reports or pages, as the visual IDs will also be duplicated. Instead, create new reports or pages. 4. If duplication is required to retain existing data or structure, follow these steps to detach the visuals and choose the option of retaining the data.

Detaching visuals

Follow the steps outlined to detach visuals.

  1. Expand the Profile menu and navigate to Report Details.

  1. Click on the Create button in the Report Details side pane to detach the visual.

  1. Choose whether to retain existing data or enter new values for data input fields.

  • To copy data input values to the new visual select the Yes, I do option

  • To enter new values, select No, I will start with blank cell values

Select the confirmation checkbox and click on Proceed to confirm that the visual can be detached.

  1. The warning symbol will be removed after the visual is saved.

When a visual is detached, the duplicate warning symbol is removed. There will not be any other explicit changes to indicate that the visual has been detached from the original. Internally, the new visual is assigned to a separate visual ID. Any changes made in the new report will no longer affect elements from the original report.

When to detach visuals

  • Detach visuals when the reports are mutually exclusive i.e., only the report structure needs to be identical but there are no data-level dependencies.

  • Don't detach visuals if you need to share data between reports or create a report that sources its data from an underlying report. E.g., you may have data input fields in a base report. You may apply formulas or conditional formatting in a second report, which consumes the data from the data input fields of the first report. In such cases, when both the data and structure need to be synced across reports, do not detach the visual.

If this is not the intended use case or behavior (as is usually the case), it is ideal to detach the visuals to remove the dependencies between them. The steps to detach the visuals, after accidental duplication, are explained .

to the Power BI service. Open the report in edit mode in the Power BI service, after the report has been published. A yellow warning symbol near the profile indicates that the visual is a duplicate.

Publish the report
here
Duplicate visual detected
Visual ID
same Visual ID in PBI desktop and PBI service
publishing the same report to different workspaces
Saving and publishing with a new name
Duplicate visual due to duplicated report
Duplicate page
Duplicate visual due to duplicated page
Duplicate report warning
Detached visual