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Consolidations and custom groups are two special reporting features that enable you to

surpass basic reporting functionality. With consolidations, you can group attribute elements

to define virtual attributes that enable you to analyze data at levels that are not inherently

available in the business model. With custom groups, you can create reports that qualify on a

row-by-row basis, greatly enhancing the flexibility of report design and the capabilities of

report-level qualifications.

What is a Consolidation?

Consolidations enable you to group together attribute elements and allow you to place these

groupings of attribute elements on a template, just like any typical attribute. The elements of

the consolidation appear as rows on your report.

Consolidations provide two powerful functions that can enhance your reporting needs. These

two functions are:

Serving as a "virtual" attribute

Performing row level math

One or more attribute elements together combined with mathematical operators

creates a consolidation element.

Consolidation elements can contain any of the following:

Elements of the same attribute (such as two cities)

Attribute elements from different levels (such as Region and Country)

Elements from unrelated attributes (such as Country and Year)

Existing consolidation elements (such as the ratio of Spring and Summer sales to Falland Winter sales)

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Existing consolidation elements from any existing consolidation in the project. You

can import consolidation elements from any existing consolidation into another

consolidation.

Reports with Multiple Consolidations

A report can contain one or more consolidations. If there is more than one consolidation on a

report, you must pay attention to the evaluation order of the consolidations. This becomes

important when you place consolidations on a report where one of the consolidations

involves division (or multiplication) and the other involves addition (or subtraction) in the

definition of the consolidation elements.

The consolidations' positions on the template determines the default calculation order among

consolidations. First, calculate the consolidation on the row axis, from left to right (outside to

inside); then, calculate the consolidation on the column axis, from top to bottom (outside to

inside).

For example, suppose you have a report that has a Revenue metric and two consolidations,

Seasons and another Years consolidation that is composed of three elements: 2002, 2003, and

2002/2003. Depending on the evaluation order of the consolidations, you will get different

results. This is because the row for Spring 2002/2003 can be either calculated as

(April 2002 + May 2002 + June 2003) / (April 2003 + May 2003 + June 2003)or

(April 2002 / April 2003) + (May 2002 / May 2003) + (June 2002/ June 2003).

You need to specify the order in which you want the calculation to be evaluated.

You can specify evaluation order via Report Data Options from the Data menu in the

Template Editor or the Report Editor

Business Scenario for Custom Groups

As Marketing Director, your job is to maintain a strong relationship with your best customers

and to increase sales. You would like to offer your best customers special promotions at a

very heavily discounted price for the items that have not sold very well recently. To do this

you need to obtain a list of your top 10 customers along with a list of your 5 lowest-selling

items on the same report. How could you accomplish this?

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What is a Custom Group?

A custom group is an object consisting of custom group elements that you can

place on a template. Each custom group element is defined with its own set of

filter qualifications.

A custom group enables you to apply different filter qualifications to different

rows of a report. Thus, the final report is similar to a collection of smaller reports

stacked one on top of another.

A custom group enables you to define each row of a report with its own filtering

qualification.

You can include one or more qualifications in a custom group element depending on the

desired result. Similar to an ordinary filter qualification, when adding a qualification for a

custom group element, you have the ability to choose any of the following types of

qualifications:

Attribute qualification (for example, Region = Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and

Southeast)

Set qualification (for example, metric qualification or a relationship filter)

Shortcut to a report (for example, any saved report can be used as a filter)

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Shortcut to a filter (for example, any saved filter)

Custom group banding qualification

Advanced qualification (joint element list)

Custom Group Elements

A custom group is made up of custom group elements. Each custom group element is

essentially a filter.

Each custom group element contains one or more expressions (qualifications). In

the example to the left, Top 10 Customers includes one qualification composed

of Revenue, rank top 10 with the level set to Customer. Likewise, the custom

group element for Bottom 5 Items would contain one metric qualification of

Revenue, rank bottom 5 with the level set to Item.

Custom Group Banding Definition

The report for Customers Deciling shown earlier in the business scenario is created using

banding points, as displayed on the left. The points assigned for this custom group slice the

revenue metric (at the Customer level) into percentage ranges with the Top 10% as the first

band, the next 40% as the second band, and the bottom 50% as the last band.

Because banding involves metrics, you must select an output level when creating a bandingqualification. The output level you specify indicates the level at which the banding

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calculation applies. In this business scenario, the level is set to the Customer attribute, so the

bands calculate across all customers.

Custom group banding enables you to slice data into bands by metric value, rank or

percent using three possible methods.

With the Band Size method, you must specify the Start at and Stop at values as wellas the Step Size parameter to define the size of each band.

With the Band Count method, you must specify the Start at, Stop at, and Band Count

values to define the number of equal bands.

With the Banding Points method, you can specify the exact placement of bands by

assigned point size. This enables the display of different size bands.

Any custom group that uses custom group banding must have a specified level at

which to calculate the bands.