Skip to main content

Hierarchy Reporting with Ragged Hierarchies

KB300417: New feature in MicroStrategy 10.4 Secure Enterprise Platform: Hierarchy Reporting



Hierarchy Reporting is a new feature introduced in MicroStrategy 10.4 Secure Enterprise Platform. This technical note explains the supported configurations, required changes in MicroStrategy Web preferences, a Hierarchical Attribute and its creation steps, and general features of Hierarchy Reporting.
Mar 30, 2017KB Article
Content
SUMMARY:
Hierarchy Reporting is a new feature introduced in MicroStrategy 10.4 Secure Enterprise Platform. This technical note explains the supported configurations, required changes in MicroStrategy Web preferences, a Hierarchical Attribute and its creation steps, and general features of Hierarchy Reporting.

WHAT IS HIERARCHY REPORTING?
Unbalanced hierarchies(also known as ragged hierarchies) are hierarchies with branches that descend to inconsistent levels. For example, in an Employee hierarchy, different parts of the organizational structure will have more management levels than others. 
Many organizations have aspects of their business that are organized in unbalanced hierarchies. Besides the Employee hierarchy, other typical examples include a chart of accounts, complex product portfolios, and multinational geographic groupings. 
Hierarchy Reports are a class of reports in which the data is naturally organized and presented in a hierarchical structure. Hierarchy Reporting features treat hierarchies as a first-class citizen, and make interacting with entire hierarchies intuitive and efficient. Both balanced and unbalanced hierarchies may be represented in a hierarchy report, although unbalanced hierarchies benefit the most from Hierarchy Reporting features.

SUPPORTED DATA SOURCE AND INTERFACES
In MicroStrategy 10.4 Secure Enterprise Platform, the following data sources are supported for Hierarchy Reporting. See the Readme for the exact database versions supported.
  • Microsoft Analysis Services
  • Oracle Essbase
Hierarchy Reporting features are currently supported only in Dashboard (Visual Insight). Normal reports, Report Services documents, and Mobile are not supported in version 10.4.

WEB PREFERENCE
Hierarchy Reporting is released as a Preview feature in MicroStrategy 10.4 Secure Enterprise Platform. When MicroStrategy is installed, Hierarchy Reporting will be disabled by default. To enable Hierarchy Reporting, implement the following steps:
  1. Log into MicroStrategy Web as an administrator.
  2. On the upper right of any page, click on the user name, and then select Preferences from the drop-down list.
  3. By default, the General preferences at the User Preferences level page is displayed. On this page, go to the Features for Customer Feedbacksection. For the Financial Reporting feature, change the feature status to “On” as shown below.
    1.jpg
    1.jpg
  4. At the bottom of the page, click on Apply

HIERARCHICAL ATTRIBUTE
In order to facilitate the building of hierarchy reports, 1MicroStrategy Secure Enterprise Platform 10.4 introduces a new type of attribute: the hierarchical attribute. The hierarchical attribute represents an entire hierarchy and all its levels. For example, you may have a Time hierarchical attribute that represents the Time hierarchy, including its levels Year, Quarter, Month, and Day. In contrast, a normal attribute usually represents a single level of a hierarchy (e.g., Year). The hierarchical attribute can be placed on a grid, filtered, and sorted, much like a normal attribute.

CREATING HIERARCHICAL ATTRIBUTES WITH DATA IMPORT
To create a hierarchy report, the first step is to perform a Data Import and connect to an OLAP data source. There are two ways to initiate the Data Import:
1) Create a standalone Intelligent Cube
The Intelligent Cube can be used to create dashboards at a later time. To import data into an Intelligent Cube, click on the Create button in the upper left of any page, and select Add External Data.
2) In Visual Insight Dashboard, import data
Data can be imported from within a dashboard. Create a new dashboard by clicking on the Create button in the upper left of any page, and select New Dashboard. In the dashboard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Add Dataset icon
2.jpg
2.jpg
, then select External Data

Once Data Import is initiated, take the following steps to create hierarchical attributes:
  1. In the 'Connect to Your Data' page, click OLAP. The 'Import From Cubes' page opens.
  2. From the MDX Connections panel on the left, select the name of the data source connection that contains the data to import. The cube catalog is displayed in the Browse Catalog panel.
  3. Click on the arrow to the left of the cube catalog to see a list of the cubes in the selected data source.
  4. To add a cube to import, click and drag the name of the cube from the Browse Catalog panel to the Editor panel on the right of the page. The cube name is displayed in the Editor panel.
  5. Below the Editor panel, select the option to Import hierarchy as hierarchical attribute.
  6. Click Finish.

Using Hierarchical Attributes in a Visual Insight Dashboard
When a Visual Insight dashboard is linked to a dataset, the hierarchical attributes are listed in the Datasets Panel. Hierarchical attributes will be denoted with the
3.jpg
3.jpg
icon. To use a hierarchical attribute in a visualization, simply drag-and-drop the desired hierarchical attribute into the main panel.
To search for the desired hierarchical attribute, use the Search box at the top of the Datasets Panel.
When the hierarchical attribute is first placed on a grid, the hierarchy will be displayed with its element tree collapsed. Elements can be expanded and collapsed by clicking on the + (expand) or  (collapse) button next to the element.
4.jpg
4.jpg



NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS
Every level of the entire hierarchy can be expanded or collapsed by using the Expand/Collapse All Levels shortcut.
  1. Hover over the row or column header to reveal an arrow on the right side of the header. Click on the arrow.
  2. Select Expand All Levels or Collapse All Levels.

A similar shortcut is available for each element as well, in order to expand every level of a branch.
  1. Right click on an element of a hierarchy.
  2. Select Expand All Lower Levels.

SORTING
When a report with a hierarchical attribute is sorted, the structure of the hierarchy will remain intact, so every element will retain its parent in the hierarchy tree. Each level of the hierarchy will be sorted separately from the other levels.
To sort on a hierarchy or a metric, hover over the row or column header to reveal an arrow on the right side of the header. Click on the arrow. The sorting options available are:
  • Sort Ascending
  • Sort Descending
  • Advanced Sort

The Advanced Sort dialog will allow users to:
  • sort on multiple hierarchical attributes or metrics
  • sort on alternative attribute forms, such as ID or Description

FILTERING
To filter the data in a dashboard sheet, drag a hierarchical attribute into the Filter Panel. The Filter Panel will display the elements of the hierarchy in a tree. Select or deselect elements to filter the data.

FILTER SELECTION SHORTCUTS
Groups of elements can be selected or deselected with the use of shortcut buttons. There are two types of shortcuts: branch selection, and level selection.
Users may want to see all elements of a hierarchy branch. For example, if users want to see the Year 2015 along with all Quarters and Months of 2015. To select or deselect all elements of a branch in the Filter Panel, hover over an element to reveal the branch selection shortcut
6.jpg
6.jpg
to the right of the element. Click on the branch selection shortcut.
Users may also want to see only the elements of a particular level of the hierarchy. For example, a user may want to see data at the Year level for every Year, but not data at the Quarter or Month levels. The level selection shortcut is a row of buttons above the hierarchy. 
5.jpg
5.jpg

To select or deselect all elements of a level, click on the button corresponding to the hierarchy level. Clicking on the All button will select or deselect all elements.

APPLYING MULTIPLE FILTER CHANGES ALL AT ONCE
By default, each time a change to the filter is made, the data in the sheet will be immediately refreshed. If the sheet contains large amounts of data, it may be helpful to apply a number of filter changes all at once. In order to be able to make a number of changes to the filter before applying it, click on the arrow at the top right of the Filter Panel, and de-select the Auto-apply Filters option. An Apply button will appear at the top of the Filter Panel.
For more information on the Visual Insight Dashboard Filter Panel, see Creating filters for a sheet of data.

VISUAL INSIGHT DASHBOARD FEATURES NOT SUPPORTED BY HIERARCHY REPORTING IN MicroStrategy Secure Enterprise Platform 10.4
The hierarchical attribute is not supported by some features in Visual Insight Dashboard. When a hierarchical attribute is in the dashboard’s dataset, the unsupported features will be disabled in the interface.
The following features are not supported by the hierarchical attribute. (For each feature, the location of the feature in the interface is listed. When there are multiple ways to perform the action, only one of the ways is documented below.)
  • Convert to Document (File > Convert to Document)
  • Download dashboard (File > Download Dashboard)
  • Adding multiple datasets (File > Add Data)
  • Replace dataset (Dataset menu > Replace Dataset With)
  • Create Group (Right click on grid element > Group)
  • Create Calculation (Right click on grid element > Calculation)
  • Alternative display styles for the Filter Panel (Filter menu > Display Style)
  • Exclude option for filtering (Filter menu > Exclude)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Microstrategy Custom number formatting symbols

Custom number formatting symbols If none of the built-in number formats meet your needs, you can create your own custom format in the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Select  Custom  as the Category and create the format using the number format symbols listed in the table below. Each custom format can have up to four optional sections, one each for: Positive numbers Negative numbers Zeros Text Each section is optional. Separate the sections by semicolons, as shown in the example below: #,###;(#,###);0;"Error: Entry must be numeric" For more examples, see  Custom number formatting examples . To jump to a section of the formatting symbol table, click one of the following: Numeric symbols Character/text symbols Date and time symbols Text color symbols Currency symbols Conditional symbols Numeric symbols For details on how numeric symbols apply to the Big Decimal data type, refer to the  Project Design Guide . ...

Case functions Microstrategy

Ca se functions Microstrategy Case functions return specified data in a SQL query based on the evaluation of user-defined conditions. In general, a user specifies a list of conditions and corresponding return values. Case This function evaluates multiple expressions until a condition is determined to be true, then returns a corresponding value. If all conditions are false, a default value is returned.  Case  can be used for categorizing data based on multiple conditions. This is a single-value function. Syntax Case ( Condition1 ,  ReturnValue1 ,  Condition2 , ReturnValue2 ,...,  DefaultValue ) Example Case(([Total Revenue] < 300000), 0, ([Total Revenue] < 600000), 1, 2) sum(Case (Day@DESC in (“Sat”,”Sun”), Sales, 0) {~+} Sum(Case(Category@DESC In("Books","Electronics"),Revenue,0)){~+} CaseV (case vector) CaseV  evaluates a single metric and returns different values according to the results. It can be used to perfo...

MicroStrategy URL API Parameters

MicroStrategy URL Structure The following table summarizes the root URL structure used for every request to MicroStrategy Web. Environment Main Application URL Administration URL J2EE http://webserver/MicroStrategy/servlet/mstrWeb http://webserver/MicroStrategy/servlet/mstrWebAdmin .NET http://webserver/MicroStrategy/asp/Main.aspx http://webserver/MicroStrategy/asp/Admin.aspx Every request sent to MicroStrategy Web calls a central controller. Parameters are appended to  Main.aspx  or  mstrWeb  (in a .NET and J2EE environment, respectively) to indicate to the controller how the request should be internally forwarded and handled. The following examples show a URL for accessing a MicroStrategy folder when the user does not have an existing session. The URL contains not only the parameters needed to connect to MicroStrategy Web, but also the parameters needed to log on and create a session. J2EE environment: <a href="http:...

Personalizing file locations, email and file subscriptions using macros in Microstrategy

Personalizing file locations MSTr allows to dynamically specify the  File Location  and  Backup File Location  in a file device using macros.  For example, if you specify the  File Location  as  C:\Reports\{&RecipientName}\ ,  all subscriptions using that file device are delivered to subfolders of  C:\Reports\ . Subscribed reports or documents for each recipient are delivered to a subfolder with that recipient’s name, such as  C:\Reports\Jane Smith\  or  C:\Reports\Hiro Protagonist\ . The table below lists the macros that can be used in the  File Location  and  Backup File Location  fields in a file device: Description Macro Date on which the subscription is sent {&Date} Time at which the subscription is sent {&Time} Name of the recipient {&RecipientName} User ID (32-character GUID) of the recipient {&RecipientID} Distribution Services add...

Custom Tooltips in Microstrategy developer and Web

Custom Tooltips in Microstrategy developer and Web The following table describes the macros you can use to customize graph tooltips in both MicroStrategy Developer and MicroStrategy Web: Macro Information Displayed {&TOOLTIP} All relevant labels and values associated with a graph item. {&GROUPLABEL} Name of the graph item's category. This value is often the graph item's attribute element information, as attributes are commonly used as the categories of graph reports. {&SERIESLABEL} Name of the graph item’s series. This value is often the graph item's metric name information, as metrics are commonly used as the series of graph reports. {&VALUE} The value of a given data point. {&XVALUE} The X-value of a data point. Only applicable to Bubble charts and Scatter plots. {&YVALUE} The Y-value of a data point. Only applicable to Bubble charts and Scatter plots. {&ZVALUE} The Z-value of a data point. Only applicable to Bubble charts and Scatter plots. {...

Apply or Pass-through functions in Microstrategy

Ap ply (Pass-Through) functions MSTR Apply functions provide access to functions or syntactic constructs that are not standard in MicroStrategy but are provided by various RDBMS systems.. Syntax common to Apply functions Apply Function Name   ("expression with placeholders", Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, …ArgN) where: Apply Function Name  – is a generic name used for the predefined pass-through functions described above expression with placeholders  – is the string describing the actual expression or syntax that the engine uses while generating the SQL and which is sent to the RDBMS. The placeholders are represented by #0, #1, and so on. "#" is a reserved character for MicroStrategy. Arg  – is an argument that replaces the parameter markers in the pattern. Arg1 replaces #0, Arg2 replaces #1, and so on. There are   five  pre-defined Apply functions to replace regular, predefined functions of the same type. For more details, cli...

Derived metric based on attribute values

Derived metric based on attribute values Here is how could create and display data correctly on using below simple steps.  Create a report with Category, Subcategory and Revenue. Create New Metric in a report or VI.  Case((Category@ID = 1), Revenue, 0) Booksand Name it as Revenue for  where 2 is Category ID for "Books"  Report will display result as below.  Result for new metric is blank. Now to fix this create a new Derived metric on Category attribute first with formula as  Max(Category) {~ }  and calling Books Now Edit the "Revenue for Books metric and Replace Category@ID with this new Books metric formula would looks like this  Case((Books = 1), Revenue, 0).  Report result would now display as expected as shown below

Microstrategy "Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted

 "Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted: SQLExecDirect. [HYT00:0: on SQLHANDLE] [MicroStrategy][ODBC Oracle Wire Protocol driver]Timeout expired" is shown when executing reports from Web When users are trying to execute some reports in MicroStrategy web in particular, they may receive the Error “SQL Generation Complete Index out of range” and “Timeout expired” error as shown below: Possible Causes: One possible cause is that the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server using a cached database connection that was already dropped by the RDBMS. To resolve this: Admin should delete the database connection caches and create a new DSNs in case they are sharing DSNs to connect to different databases. In addition, change the settings for the ‘Connection lifetime’ and the ‘Connection idle time out’.  Follow the steps below to perform the mentioned changes and verify the report after each step and some of the settings require i-server r...

Microstrategy Document Autotext macros:

Autotext  code/macros in  Microstrategy Document/dashboard This is a list of the available auto text macros that the Report Services Document engine recognizes. The following auto text codes allow you to add  document variable information to your document. These auto text codes are automatically replaced by information about the document. Auto text codes for MSTR document/dashboard:  AUTOTEXT DESCRIPTION   {&PAGE}  Display the current page.  {&NPAGES}  Display the total number of pages.  {&DATETIME}  Display the current date and time.  {&USER}  Display the user name that is executing the Report Services Document.  {&DOCUMENT}  Display the document name.  {&DOCUMENTID}  Display the document ID.  {&DESCRIPTION}  Display the document description.  {&PROJECT}  Display the project name.  {&EXECUTIONTIME}  Dis...

Email Subscription in Microstrategy

Create Email Subscription in Microstrategy Creates an email subscription. Do not include any leading or trailing spaces in the ANSWER parameters. This causes a SQL error and prevents the command from executing. Ex: CREATE EMAILSUBSCRIPTION "New Multi Users" FOR OWNER "administrator" SCHEDULE "Books Closed" CONTACTGROUP "TEST"  CONTENT "Electronics Revenue by Region" IN FOLDER "\Public Objects\REPORTS\SUBJECT Areas\Sales and Profitability Analysis" IN PROJECT "MicroStrategy Tutorial" DELIVERYFORMAT HTML  EXPIRATIONDATE NEVER EXPRIED FILENAME "file_name"   SUBJECT  "Test REPORT" MESSAGE "Please Test"; CREATE EMAILSUBSCRIPTION [ subscription_name ] [FOR OWNER login_name ] SCHEDULE schedule_name  (ADDRESS address_name | USER user_name  | CONTACT contact_name [ADDRESS contact_ address_name ] | CONTACTGROUP contact_group_name ) CONTENT ( report_or_document_name IN FOLDER   loc...