Introduction

Actions are a great way to extend Analysis Services cube. Actions are basically events which users can initiate by selecting portion of a cube or a cell. Actions can be of different types for example Drillthrough, Standard or Report actions.

In SQL Server 2012, Microsoft introduced new Analysis Services Tabular mode. You can create actions in Multi-dimensional mode but Tabular mode does not give an option to create actions. Microsoft may add this feature in future releases but right now this feature is missing in Tabular mode.

Solution

I did some research and found a very nice tool BIDS Helper. This tool has many features for both multi-dimensional and tabular mode. One of the feature in tabular mode is Tabular Actions Editor. You can use this tool to create actions in tabular mode. All you need to do is download the .exe file and install the BIDS Helper. Open the SQL Server Data Tools and open Analysis Services Tabular project. In Solution Explorer, right click on the model file and select Tabular Actions Editor. Follow step by step instructions from documentation section.