Create your own hierarchy in Cloud for Analytics
In the first two parts (Part 1, Part 2) we created a model based on a Google Sheet and uploaded the data from the Google Sheet to Cloud for Analytics.
As the next step I wanted to see how simple it is to setup a hierarchy, change the hierarchy, and then use the hierarchy as part of the visualizations.
So first of all I re-opened my model that I created based on the Google Sheet.
I then selected the column for the product showing the actual data. You have to select the actual data for the hierarchy menu to become visible.
Then you can navigate to the right hand side and click on the “+” sign and there is the menu “Add Hierarchy.
I then received an additional column and I named the new column “Parent” and I was able to enter the parents and I simply did add the Parent IDs into the table as well without a parent (see above).
As soon as I saved the definition I was able to see the hierarchy on the right hand side in form of a tree control.
The nice part of the tree control is the fact that you can move items around in the tree without having to go back to the actual data. You can move items and the data in the table is updated accordingly.
After finishing the hierarchy as part of the model I also wanted to see how I could use the hierarchy as part of the visualizations, so I created a new story with an empty canvas and did add a bar chart to it.
By default the chart was showing the top level entries of my hierarchies and the leafs / children were hidden.
When selecting a particular element in the chart the context menu became available and the third icon from the left (tree with a arrow pointing downward) is the option to drill down to the next level in the hierarchy.
… and after the drill down you can select the element in the chart and as you can see the again changed and now the arrow points upwards for the Drill Up option.
What did I like ?
- It was very easy to setup a hierarchy, but on the other hand we are just using spreadsheets right now. the real proof comes with HANA and BW
- the Tree control isn’t just a display but is also allowing me to make changes to the hierarchy
What am I missing ?
- I was using a hierarchy so I was expecting an option to decide how far I would like to expand the hierarchy in the visualization
- I was also expecting an option to choose between a drill down option or to see the complete hierarchy with nodes and leafs and children
Next time we will look at the option to connect to the HANA system.
Ingo,
great blog. I can tell you from a project we are working at, BW hierarchies are read from the BW Query and automatically created. Works fine and getting better with this rapid pace of new releases.
Could you describe the steps?I would really appreciate your help. JesusJesús,
It’s very easy. When selecting the query elements (Dimensions, Attributes and Hierarchies), right before mapping them to the data model. Just check the box.
Then in the mapping, map the hierachy column as dimension hierarchy.
Mauricio
Thank you very much for your help.
My problem was that I wanted to do the hierarchy based on the structure of the dimensions.
You can also do it but without texts.
Kind Regards"Gracias Saludos"
Jesús,
you can model asource field a HIERCHY if this fields contains the Parent ID of another field that is mapped as a dimension. If you have that structure in your source data, yes, you can create a hierarchy.
this seems like a really manual way to create a hierarchy. is there no way to infer the hierarchy from the data? for example if I load an excel file with product and product category it would already be inferred in the upload file what the relationship between product and product category is, so in that case i wouldn't expect that it would be necessary to manually recreate that relationship.
Hello Lance,
depending on your source - lets say BW / HANA - now you can leverage hierarchies when you connect to the source system, but at the time when I wrote the original blog, those options didn't exist yet.
regards
Ingo
Wow – I was exploring BusinessObjects Cloud and I couldn’t make creating hierarchy based on data set. Trying to find answer everywhere and I understand that it’s not possible based on data set. As we do with Lumira: Upload your data, and define/create hierarchy’s based on your dimensions, this does not exist yet with BusinessObjects Cloud. All we can do is manually creating Parent / Child relation based on dimension values. I assume more enhanced hierarchy creation features will be added to BusinessObjects.
Hi Inga
I would like to provide options to my client using Analysis for Office and Native HANA to create hierarchies on the fly (e.a. upload a hierarchy in spreadsheet and combine with Native HANA view/table to create a report.
Appreciate if you could point me to a right direction
Regards
Tansu