Trouble passing a user-specified input variable to CALCULATE function

[scooper43]

In order to get user-specified input into the data model, I created a linked table where the user can define a text string for a series of application monitors as per below:

Excel 2010
	B	C
2	Application Monitors	App To Monitor
3	Application Monitor #1	Blackberry
4	Application Monitor #2	Skype
5	Application Monitor #3
6	Application Monitor #4
7	Application Monitor #5
8	Application Monitor #6
9	Application Monitor #7
10	Application Monitor #8
11	Application Monitor #9
12	Application Monitor #10
13	Application Monitor #11
14	Application Monitor #12
Inputs

Now I want to filter based on the protocol that the user specified:

I have tried:

CALCULATE (SUM (xxx), LOOKUP (Inputs[App To Monitor], Inputs [Application Monitor] = "Application Monitor #1"))

but it doesn't let me put a LOOKUP function inside a CALCULATE function. The Inputs table is not related to anything -- just a way for me to store these "global variables"

Is there a better way to do this?

I also tried the ROW function

i.e.
CALCULATE (SUM (xxx), ROW (Inputs[Application Monitor], 1))

But it gives me a funny error on the ROW command - first arguement needs to be a column -- it is !!

Thanks in advance for your help

Steve

 

[powerpivotpro]

CALCULATE generally does not allow complex expressions in its comparisons.

Instead of CALCULATE(xxx, filter expr) try CALCULATE(xxx, FILTER(table, filter expr))

But only use FILTER when you have to. It generally results in slower formulas than CALCULATE so only use it when normal CALCULATE won't do the trick.