Custom Time Entity

Question

Hello,

I am looking for the best solution to define a custom time entity.

For example, I would like to select:

last 3 completed months, last 6 months, and last 12 months.

The goal is to see the same cube three times in a data view with the respective reference to the 3,6,12 closed months.

The whole thing should be determined dynamically based on the current date (if necessary, using a data reader to update the entities).

Does anyone have any ideas?

Best regards

Robert Barkaway · Answer

Late to the party on this one but an alternative approach for achieving what you describe is to make the month selections in your screen trigger and then apply them to the different blocks using the Apply Selection to Block option, this allows you to generate each month selection dynamically each time and apply it as needed. The benefit of this approach is that you can then use the same method to allow the user to dynamically switch a single column from 3 to 6 to 12 months as needed by adding a button and letting them interactively choose which of the three options they want to apply.

Uwe · Answer

Hello,

I have now solved it using custom time entities.

I still had three available here, which I defined as 3, 6, and 12 months. A daily data reader then generates the appropriate months for me and adjusts the relationships.

This was the best way for me without having to set up additional data flows, etc.

My goal was to use a cube in a data view that I use three times, for example.

I can now use the reference to select the corresponding time range entity.

Yuliya Berezutskiy · Answer

what you can do is create a standalone entity with 3 members: 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. Then you can create a cube structured by this entity and use dataflows with period offsets to populate the months you need for comparison (can also calculate monthly averages for comparison purposes). Are you interested in seeing the data by months (say, last 3 months would be last month, 2 months back, 3 months back, etc) or you are interested in seeing the data grouped? For grouped data a new entity with 3 members will do the job. If you need to see the data by month, you can create another entity and populate it with 1 - 12 months and use grouped month entity as a parent. Then, populate the cube at 1-12 month entity level while using the parent entity for reporting. Just a thought