Frequently Asked Questions

General

How can I cancel an action I have just performed?

By using the undo feature available through a dashboard action or keyboard shortcut.

How do I open a bookmark if nothing happens when I click on it.

Interactions are different depending on whether the bookmark is a dashboard or a widget/filter: see how to launch a bookmark.

If my pivot table or tabular view result is completely or partially empty, how can I display the complete content?

Measures, filters and context values can affect your query result. Make sure that all these elements are defined as expected. Otherwise, follow the instructions below:

By default, most of the MDX-based widgets remove empty rows or columns if the NON EMPTY keyword is used. To display the full result, including empty rows and columns, you must remove the NON EMPTY keyword from the query axes using the Mdx Editor.

How can I share a bookmark with a colleague?

To share a bookmark and make it visible to colleagues, you must set the correct permissions on your bookmarks.

Sharing a bookmark using a URL is possible but must be be implemented by your product development team.

Measure

How can I create a custom measure?

Custom measures must be created using the Calculation Editor.

How can I find the difference in a measure over a two-day period?

It is possible to calculate this type of difference by using the Calculation Editor or MDX directly, : See how to implement day-to-day difference.

Widgets

What is the difference between a tabular view and a pivot table?

The differences between these two views are summarized in this comparison table. Please also refer to Pivot Table and Tabular View reference pages.

How can I show or hide totals in a pivot table?

The Show and hide totals section describes the methods available for showing and hiding totals from a Pivot Table.

How can I add a title to a widget?

Click on the title that you wish to edit. If you cannot see the title, click the 'more' icon (...) in the top right corner of the widget and select "Show title bar".

How can I move a widget to a different location?

Drag the widget by the title and drop it where it is required. If you cannot see the title, click on (...) in the top right corner of the widget and select "Show title bar". Refer to Moving widgets to find an illustration of how this is done.

Filters

Why does my top filter disappear when I interact with one of the widgets in my dashboard?

The "Dashboard filters" panel shows only the filters that are common to all widgets in a dashboard. If you locally change a widget's filter so that it differs from those in other widgets, then all dashboard filters will cease to operate, because this filter is no longer common to all widgets in the dashboard. Read more about Dashboard and local filters.

Why do I sometimes only see data that applies to a specific date and why do default filters exist?

A hierarchy may be configured as a slicing hierarchy if it is not meaningful to aggregate across all members of the hierarchy (for example, dates or value of inventory). Refer to default filters for more information.

Chart

Can tables be converted to charts, or charts to tables?

You can create a table from a chart by using the Show data context menu option.

Currently it is not possible to create a chart from a table.

Definitions

What is a cube?

From Microsoft System Center:

An OLAP cube is a data structure that overcomes the limitations of relational databases by providing rapid analysis of data. Cubes can display and sum large amounts of data while also providing users with searchable access to any data points. This way, the data can be rolled up, sliced, and diced as needed to handle the widest variety of questions that are relevant to a user’s area of interest.

In concrete terms, a cube contains dimensions, hierarchies, levels, measures, KPIs and sets. See OLAP cube for more details.

What is the difference between a slicing hierarchy and an aggregatable hierarchy?

• A regular hierarchy is considered aggregatable: this means it is possible to aggregate data across all members of the hierarchy. For example, consider a geographical hierarchy with a 'turnover' measure: as a user, you would expect to see the worldwide aggregated turnover across all countries.
• By contrast, a slicing hierarchy is not aggregatable at the top level: this means it is not meaningful to aggregate data across all members of the hierarchy. For example, consider a date hierarchy with a measure that outputs the current bank account balance for a given date: no meaningful information can be obtained by aggregating the bank account balance across all dates.

What is an "epoch"?

An epoch is an instrumental dimension that allows the exploration of different states of the data. Different epochs reflect different snapshots of the cube.

Epochs are particularly useful:

• when data updates arrive in real-time and it is necessary to walk back in time and see data as it was in the past.
• when it is advantageous to apply changes to the data and analyze what-if scenarios.

Epochs are configured to match the organization's needs. If necessary, your product development team can tailor the dimension to your needs.

What is the difference between a dimension, a hierarchy, and a level?

• Dimension is a logical group of attributes, for example, Geography. Think of it as of a logical "folder" containing hierarchies.
• Hierarchy is a sub-category of a dimension and represents a precise type of data. For example, "City" or "Territory" could be hierarchies for the "Geography" dimension.
• Level is a sub-category of a hierarchy. Levels have a specific order with a parent-child relationship. If the hierarchy contains one level, it will be displayed as a flat attribute in the pivot table. On the other hand, if it contains multiple levels, adding a hierarchy to a pivot table would display the first level and allow users to expand each member against the next level and display sub-totals. For example, a "Territory" hierarchy has "Region" as the top level. "Region" expands into "Country" at the second level, and "Country" may have "City" - at the leaf level. See the Pivot Table page.

What is the difference between a member and a measure?

• Measures compute and aggregate information from the data. For example, the total number of records or the average size of orders.
• Members are attributes or categories of a level. For example, "New York" or "London" would be members of the "City" level. Another example with a "Calendar" hierarchy that contains two levels, Year and Date. The values "2016," "2017," and "2018" would be Members of the level "Year." The values "1 May 2018," "2 May 2018," etc. would be Members of the level Date.

What is the difference between a calculated member, a calculated measure and a formula?

• A calculated member is a generic term used to describe a member whose expression is defined in MDX. Typically, a calculated member will be defined in the WITH MDX clause of the query.
• A calculated measure is a calculated member that is defined on the Measures hierarchy.
• A formula is another term for calculated measure.

What is the difference between a slicer and a subselect?

Both slicers and subselects represent MDX filters.

• A slicer is defined as a member, or a tuple of members, in the WHERE clause. A slicer cannot contain a filter on a hierarchy that is already being used on either the rows axis or the columns axis.
• A subselect is defined as an inner SELECT statement, allowing a more complex expression to be defined as a filter.

The Content Editor generates a slicer whenever the hierarchy that is being filtered is not in the main rows axis or the main columns axis and the filter is a monoselection (i.e. a single member). Otherwise, when the hierarchy is displayed on rows or columns, or when the filter is not a monoselection, the filter will be created as a subselect.

Technically, in ActivePivot, subselects will translate as "SubCubes" whereas slicers won't.

Normally, writing a filter as a slicer or as a subselect will make no difference. However, this has an impact when, for example, you implement day-to-day difference.

What is the difference between expand, drill-down, drill-in and drillthrough ?

Consider the following pivot table:

• Expanding DeskA will keep the current data and decompose the measure against the direct children of DeskA.

• Using Drill-down on DeskA will filter by DeskA and only display the next level BookId.

• Using Drill-in on DeskA will filter by DeskA and remove the rows axis.

• Using Drillthrough on DeskA will reveal the underlying facts that contributed to that cell.

What is the State Editor?

The State Editor is not intended to be used regularly by end users. This widget allows to fine-tune settings and configuration of widgets.

What is lazy loading?

Lazy loading is a technique used in Pivot Table and Tabular view widgets to defer the download of data until it is needed. Therefore the table's rows and columns are only downloaded from the server when the user scrolls up or down and looks at them on the screen. This dramatically improves performance compared with fetching the complete result.

Example: if a table has one million rows, the framework will download about 2000 rows (lazy loading) and render about 30 rows (lazy rendering). In your project, cardinalities might be different depending on the way that lazy loading is configured but it remains conceptually the same.

Lazy loading is configurable per project/widget. Ask your product development team.

MDX

Are there any resources available to enable me to learn MDX?

See listed available resources

Does ActiveUI SDK provide any help to those who are writing MDX?

Yes. ActiveUI SDK provides syntax validation through its MDX Editor. Keyboard shortcuts that provide automatic completion or indentation are also available.