Designing limits

This section outlines your available choices when creating limits. In particular, it focuses on the following fields of the Limit Structure panel:

Field Name	Description
Rule	The supported limit rules are: - Greater Than: The limit has a breach status when the measure value is greater than the specified value. - Less Than: The limit has a breach status when the measure value is less than the specified value.
Warn when within	Enables or disables warning status when within a specified percentage of the limit value. This is useful when you want to monitor when limits have high utilizations, for example, over 80%.
% of limit value	A percentage value that defines a percentage threshold from the limit value, which results in a limit warning. In a pivot table, the traffic light will display amber status for the limit, and a Warning exception will be generated. For a Greater Than limit, this is the percentage of utilization where a warning is triggered. For example, on a limit where there is a breach at 10,000 and a warning at 90%, the warning will be triggered at 9,000. For a Less Than limit, this is the percentage of the limit over the breach. For example, if a limit is defined as breaching when below 10,000, a warning of 10% will be triggered when the value is 11,000.
Value/Absolute Value	Sets whether the measure value should be interpreted as an absolute value when comparing to limit value. This is useful, for example, when you want to set sensitivity limits, which can be positive or negative numbers, but should be monitored as an absolute value.

In essence, you have the following options available when designing a limit:

• Rule: Choose between Greater Than and Less Than.
• Warn when within: Choose between true and false.
• Absolute Value: Choose between true and false.

This means that there are 8 possible combinations that can be used when designing a limit:

	Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
1.	GREATER_THAN	True (20%)	True
2.	LESS_THAN	True (20%)	True
3.	GREATER_THAN	False	True
4.	LESS_THAN	False	True
5.	GREATER_THAN	True (20%)	False
6.	LESS_THAN	True (20%)	False
7.	GREATER_THAN	False	False
8.	LESS_THAN	False	False

The following section visualizes what this means for your limits.

Overview

In the following examples we will use similar data to illustrate the different combinations of limit design. The data is as follows:

• the limit value will be 1,000 or -1,000
• when used, the warning threshold will be 20% of the limit value

In the cases where the limit uses an absolute value, the visualization of both the negative and the positive limit will be the same, so only one diagram is required.

In the following diagrams, given the scenarios for each case, the colored zones illustrate numerical regions where the limit will:

• breach, denoted by red zones
• warn, denoted by amber zones
• pass, denoted by green zones

Case 1

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
GREATER_THAN	True (20%)	True

Case 2

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
LESS_THAN	True (20%)	True

Case 3

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
GREATER_THAN	False	True

Case 4

Rule = LESS_THAN, Warning = False, Absolute Value = True

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
LESS_THAN	False	True

Case 5

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
GREATER_THAN	True (20%)	False

Positive Limit Value (1,000)

Negative Limit Value (-1,000)

Case 6

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
LESS_THAN	True (20%)	False

Positive Limit Value (1,000)

Negative Limit Value (-1,000)

Case 7

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
GREATER_THAN	False	False

Positive Limit Value (1,000)

Negative Limit Value (-1,000)

Case 8

Rule	Warning	Absolute Value
LESS_THAN	False	False

Positive Limit Value (1,000)

Negative Limit Value (-1,000)