Analytics books

Analytics books were introduced in Version 7.5, and give users the capability to create books on the web to slice, dice and visualise their data.

Creating a new book

To create a book simply click the button on the web toolbar.

You will be taken to the connection screen to select a cube, and choose the layout of the initial sheet in the book.

Standard UI

Analytics book are made up of the report area on the left, and the designer on the right.

The designer can be minimised by clicking the pin icon.

Hierarchies

In the designer you can drag and drop dimensions to set the layout of your report.

Dimensions in the Headers area display an extra icon. This allows you to switch between two modes when multiple members are selected:

• Slice - A drop down is displayed that allows you to chose which member is applied to the data.
• Total - The total for all the members selected is displayed.

Members

If you select a dimension in the designer, it will automatically switch to the members view. Yuo can select individual members, or multi-select using the Ctrl and Shift keys.

Additionally, you can right click a member and use the menu to select descendants at a given level, as seen here.

Report Header

The top section of the report area contains two sections.

The first is the Title area. This gives a brief description of the current selection, and contains a few buttons.

On the left are the back/forward buttons, which allow you to undo any changes you have made to the report, for example navigating back up the dimension you have been drilling down into.

On the right is the sheet properties button. This allows you to alter the report layout, and set drill mode.

The second selection contains the slicers for dimensions in the header area. Slicers only apply when there are multiple selections, so will not appear for single members, or when the header is in Total mode.

If no slicers are visible the section is automatically hidden to give more room to display the data.

Report Types

There are several sheet layouts available when you create a new sheet.

Grid

This is simply a table of data which you can manipulate. You can drill into the data using the drill indicators, and sort the data by clicking the arrows in columns headers.

Context menus provide access to more complex functions such as ranking and filtering the columns.

Grid and Chart

This adds a chart that visualises the grid. You can set the chart type, and select data to allow you to highlight outliers.

Grid and Treemap

Treemaps allow you to visualise two measures at once, and compare their relative sizes. The UI changes slightly in this mode so that you can easily pick the two measures to represent the size and colour to the tree segments.

Small Multiple

Small Multiple Charts allow you to slice and display your data by a number of dimensions at once. Here the UI changes to give you more positions for Hierarchies to exploit this ability.

Small Multiple Scatter

Scatter plots display trends and clusters when two measures are compared, so in this mode the UI again shows a member selector to allow you to easily pick these.