Powerbi Te Docs

Tabular Editor documentation lookup

Tabular Editor has two distributions and two doc sites; pick the right one before quoting features or syntax.

Distributions

If the user runs te2-cli or invokes pbi-agent skills that shell out to the CLI, default to TE2 unless they specify TE3 — TE2 is what we install and what runs in CI.

Where to look up what

Common scripting recipes

// Bulk-create measures from a list of (name, expression) pairs
var pairs = new[] {
    new { Name = "Total Sales",   Expr = "SUM('Sales'[Amount])" },
    new { Name = "Total Qty",     Expr = "SUM('Sales'[Quantity])" },
};
foreach (var p in pairs) {
    var m = Model.Tables["Sales"].AddMeasure(p.Name, p.Expr);
    m.FormatString = "#,0.00";
    m.DisplayFolder = "Core";
}

// Apply a measure prefix to all measures in a table
foreach (var m in Model.Tables["Sales"].Measures) {
    if (!m.Name.StartsWith("[fact] "))
        m.Name = "[fact] " + m.Name;
}

// Hide all FK columns (named "*Key" or "*ID") on dim tables
foreach (var t in Model.Tables.Where(x => x.Name.StartsWith("dim"))) {
    foreach (var c in t.Columns.Where(c => c.Name.EndsWith("Key") || c.Name.EndsWith("ID")))
        c.IsHidden = true;
}

Common BPA expression idioms

// Measures must have a format string
Measure: string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(FormatString)

// Tables must not be hidden if they have visible measures
Table: !IsHidden && Measures.Any(m => !m.IsHidden) && Columns.All(c => c.IsHidden)

// Date table must have IsDateTable flag
Table: Name.ToLower().Contains("date") && !IsDateTable

CLI batch deploy pattern

TabularEditor.exe `
    "model.bim" `
    -D "Provider=MSOLAP;Data Source=powerbi://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/MyWorkspace;Initial Catalog=MyModel" `
    "MyModel" `
    -O `
    -B "rules.json"

Flags worth knowing:

When to escalate to TOM directly

TOMWrapper covers ~95% of model operations. Drop to raw TOM (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Tabular) when:

• Tweaking annotations not surfaced by the wrapper
• Reading RequestedTimeout, ImpersonationMode and other connection properties
• Inspecting Database.Model.SerializeOptions before TMSL export
• Iterating refresh policy partition templates

For TOM reference, the canonical source is the SDK: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.analysisservices.tabular.

Pairs well with

• bpa-rules skill — for authoring rule files
• c-sharp-scripting skill — for executing scripts in TE2
• te2-cli skill — for CLI invocation patterns from pbi-agent