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Analysis reports

Overview

Resizing rows and columns

Drag column and row boundaries to re-size the table (as you would in a spreadsheet). Select multiple headers to re-size at the same time (CTRL+Click).

When resizing columns and rows, an indicator appears showing you the size (in pixels) of the item.

The right-click menu

General actions relevant to tables e.g, inserting and removing rows and/or columns, sorting, drill capabilities and member related functions are examples of what can be found in the respective right click menus.

Table formatting

Header selectors

Entire rows and columns can be selected using the row and column header selectors.

Note

Columns and Rows can only be selected in design mode.

Formatting options

Most table formatting can be located on the Table design panel. Available formatting functions are listed below, with further explanations where relevant.

Button

Item / Section

Description

StylingFont.png
StylingBold.png

Styling

Text font weight and size, style, and background color.

FormatTableClearFormatting.png

Clear formatting

Clear formatting. Allows you to clear all formatting, i.e. return to default

FormatTablePrimaryAlternateRow.png

Primary / Alternate Row

Specify shading for the primary rows (1st, 3rd, etc.) or the secondary rows (2nd, 4th, etc.) as described in Shading Analysis Rows.

FormatTableMemberGradient.png

Member gradient

Grades the default background color in hierarchies (specified background colors override this setting).

tableBorder.jpg

Borders

Specify overall table and cell border styles, widths, and colors.

FormatTableAlignment.png

Alignment

Specify cell alignment (left, center, or right), or indentation position

FormatTableMargins.png

Margins

Set cell margins (the space between the cell's text and the surrounding border).

FormatTableNumberStyle.png

Number style

Specify the predefined number style for highlighted rows or columns. Alternatively, a format string can be typed directly in the list box (offering precise format control). Both number and date format string types are supported.

Primary and alternate row shading

Shading can be used on primary rows and alternate rows to make the analysis more readable.

  • Primary rows: These are the first row in your analysis, and every odd-numbered row after that.

  • Alternate rows: These are the second row in your analysis, and every even-numbered row after that.

Clearing analysis formatting

Important

This feature is relevant only to ISV's and others who are creating their own solutions.

When testing the import of a solution that you built, a warning may display about missing members. This warning indicates missing members will affect resource formatting. To fix the problem, return to the resources you exported, remove the incorrect formatting, and perform the export and import again.

Select ranges of cells in an analysis

Select ranges, or blocks of cells by using CTRL and/or SHIFT click, or by using the column and row headers.

  • CTRL-Click. Multiple individual cells can be selected by CTRL-clicking them

  • SHIFT-Click. By selecting a cell in the top left corner of a range, as well as the bottom right corner, a rectangular range of cells can be selected.

Member properties

Member properties provide additional information about members but cannot be used to slice or filter (e.g. descriptions, class and type). They appear when you hover over any member in an analysis report, as well as on the right click menu of a member.

In addition, all member properties can be seen grouped into the member properties folder in the Dimension Tree within each member level.

Subtotals and grand totals

Row and Column totals can be found on the Data design panel. Column and row totals and summaries appear as additional columns or rows.

Note

  • If the table is transposed (via the Data design panel), any existing subtotals are also transposed and displayed.

  • Subtotals cannot be used with other column or row summaries.

  • The right-click menu can be used to manipulate subtotals, and hide or display individual attribute columns.

  • The first attribute column cannot be collapsed.

Row and column filtering

Quite often, results in reports contain rows and/or columns that have zero or empty values. When many rows and/or columns are blank, you may wish to hide them to keep the report clean and easy to read.

Paging

The following tips may be useful when viewing and editing tables.

Freeze panes

To freeze the display of column and row headers in the report's table, use the Freeze Panes switch on the Table design panel.

Temporarily hide function pop-up window

When creating a custom named set, calculated member, or function, the resulting dialog box can sometimes extend over an area of the table. If you click the dialog tab, the box disappears but remains 'active', reappearing when you drag a useable entity on top of it (or click it).

You cannot place the focus anywhere else unless the function has become inactive, by either canceling or saving the last action.

Number of pages in a report

If the analysis returns a large number of rows or columns, the corresponding table is displayed on a per-screen basis. If a report has more than one page, a Number of pages button becomes visible on the toolbar.

Note

  • CTRL+Up/Down/Left/Right keys can be used to move to adjacent screens (e.g. use CTRL+Down to go to the next screen).

  • This feature affects only the display of the resource on the screen. Printing is handled separately.

Sorting

Sorting options on analyses are available on the right click menu of headers.

Removing and restoring members

When viewing reports, the report consumer may wish to remove some section of the data.

This can be achieved by using the Remove and Restore member functionality. Members that were removed can be restored again, once the Removed Members switch has been enabled.

Drill up, drill down and drill through

Often reports start out showing data at a particular view or level, but frequently you want to see more or less detail or view the detail by another dimension for better decision making.

Drill up, Drill down and Drill through gives you the ability to change the granularity of reports as required.

Drill up

Drill up is like “walking through different levels of a hierarchy, from the bottom up”. It is mostly used to “undo” a drill down function.

Although many analysis or visualizations are shown on the top level of data by default, e.g. sales by year or quarter, there are also scenario’s that would require to start on the lowest level and drill up to the higher levels only if required.

Sales Reps may want to keep track of their sales by day but would also frequently want to drill up and see how they track for the month so far.

Drill down

Is like “walking through different levels of a hierarchy, from the top down”. For hierarchical data where values are grouped into levels, drilling down moves from one level down to the next.

Common hierarchies:

  • Date based data – Year, quarter, month and day.

  • Geographical data – Country, State, Postal code, City.

  • Sales by Month drilled drilled down to Sales by Day.

GrossProfitByYearQuarterMonth.png

Hierarchical data is necessary in order to use the drill down functionality. A minimum of two levels are required for drill down, and there is no limit on how many levels you can have.

Drill through

Drill through can be thought of as navigating to “related data”. It allows you to explore data by taking you to another or different related report.

A detail report can be generated by drilling through (double click) on any cell or area of the report.

A custom report can also be created and saved as a detail report. This can then be added to a resource as a drill through target. This will automatically be opened on the double click action of the source report, with the context of the current selection or filters of the first report applied.

More than one detail report can be linked to a resource as a drill through target and can be opened via the cell right click menu

Drilling options

Several drilling options are available depending on the location where the drill action takes place.

  • Drilling on an entire analysis

Drilling on an entire analysis is achieved by not selecting an area of the analysis itself, but using the Drill Up and Drill Down buttons on the resource options menu.

  • Drilling on a selected heading. You can drill on a selected heading in your analysis by using the right-click menu or the resource options menu.

  • Drilling on a selected cell. You can drill on a selected cell in your analysis by using the right-click menu or the resource options menu.

  • Drilling on multiple cells or headings. You can multi-select cells or headings and then perform the drill action ONLY by using the resource options menu.

The behavior of drill up and drill down varies according to whether you have selected multiple cells or multiple headings.

Note

  • If multiple headings are selected, they must all be on the same axis and from the same level of the same hierarchy, otherwise, an Invalid selection for drill up/down error may appear.

  • You must use the buttons on the resource options menu for this function. Selecting multiple cells or headings, then right-clicking one of them and choosing Drill Up or Drill Down from the context menu will drill up or down on just the cell or heading that was right-clicked.

How drilling works behind the scenes

Drilling is implemented by wrapping and unwrapping tabs on the placeholders of the analysis in one of three functions:

  • Drill up

  • Drill down

  • Drill down restriction

These functions do not appear in the function explorer and cannot be used manually, however, they work like other functions.

Drill Up

The Drill Up function drills up to the level above the specified original set.

For example, the function could drill up to the level above the Quarter level (which is a set), to display the Year level.

Drill Down

The Drill Downfunction drills down on a specified set of members within a specified original set.

For example, the function could drill down on the Years level in the Fiscal Date Hierarchy to display the Sales on the level below it e.g. Quarters.

Note

When drilling down on the entire analysis, the second placeholder of this function is not used, because the action is performed for the entire report, and not only a particular member.

Drill Down Restriction

The Drill Down restriction function restricts the specified original set to displaying only a specified set of members.

For example, American Customers have sales in 2019 and 2020, but the drill down action was done on American Customers for 2020, so the Year level is restricted.

Sparklines and KPIs in a table

Sparklines are a convenient way to add visualization components with feedback on some history to an analysis report. On a Sales order analysis you may want to see the sales over the last 6 or 12 months graphically alongside other relevant numbers.

A sparkline function has the following components:

Number of Data points. Specifies the number of points for which the measure specified should be measure. E.g. A Sales by month sparkline will have 6 or 12 as the number of points measured.

Formula. Holds the values to be measure, e.g. sales in this example

Time Context. Specifies the time period when the sparkline ends. Leaving this placeholder empty will use the current period as the time context.

For the example below, Sales for 6 months will be displayed until Dec 2020 because the time context comes from the Month level of the Fiscal Date Hierarchy.

AddingASparklineToATable.gif

Important

If no time members are present in your current query, Data Hub will not be able to determine the time context automatically. In this scenario, you must specify a member to represent the desired time span.