4 ways to get USERNAME in Power Query

Regardless of what are you requirements, be that providing some user context during slicing of data or a filtering mechanism for data querying, having a function like USERNAME() in Power Query toolbox can greatly simplify your data mashup scripts. While trying to build a more robust approach for self referencing queries in M, I’ve managed to collect 4 methods on getting the current username in Power BI. These methods rely on a variety of dependencies — R, NTFS, LocalDB and PowerShell, and come with their own advantages and disadvantages. Based on your setup you might find some of the methods more appropriate than the others, however they are not a universal replacement for a native supported function like USERNAME().

1. R.Execute()

Once again the Swiss Army knife of Power Query — R with its hook function R.Execute, never fails at extending Power BI capabilities. Here is an example of how I call the system command whoami via R function system2 and use its output as a data source in Power Query.