Hi,

We are using Indicator Set five (glass), which gives us a green up trend arrow and a red down trend arrow.

My client questioned why the arrow is red for a descending measure (lower is better), when the trend is downward. They correctly stated that if the measure actual value is less than the previous / prior measure actual value, this is a good thing. Showing a down arrow is appropriate but colouring it red indicates a negative drop.

Having worked with PMF version 4.2.1 at another client, I am familiar with the black trend arrows. I see that some of the indicator sets still use these black arrows. In fact, all the sets that show green/yellow/red use the black arrows and the sets that only show yellow/pink and red use the coloured arrows. We use the indicator set five, because the client does not want to see green indicators ever.

Before I jump in and start customizing a "yellow/red lights with black arrows" indicator set, I want to know about some existing images in the \mainstreet\images\ app folder:

-i01hidn.gif: green dot with a black down arrow
-i01lodn.gif: red square with a black down arrow
-i01hiup.gif: green dot with a black up arrow
-i01loup.gif: red square with a black up arrow

It seems to me that these would make ideal trend indicators, as they can indicate down trends that are good or down trends that are bad, and vice-versa.

Are these images currently used in PMF, and if so, where? Is the logic for determining a good downward trend versus a bad downward trend built-in to the Measures - Compare to Previous / Prior reports? Do you have any tips on how I can use these for trending indicators, or do you recommend using the black arrows to bypass this issue entirely?

Cheers,

Joey

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Moogle,

If I read your email properly, the customer seems to be under the impression that descending arrows indicate a drop in VALUE. They do not. The arrows represent a drop in PERFORMANCE. With an ascending measure, VALUE and PERFORMANCE correlate. If value went up between the two compare points, that means performance also went up.

But if you're dealing with a descending measure, the arrow down for the trend indicator indicates that the VALUE actually INCREASED. Which makes sense if you think about it a moment. With a descending measure, you want the value to go DOWN. So if the value goes up between the two compared points, the arrow goes DOWN.

Hope that makes sense.

As for the combo indicators (dot with arrow) they worked the SAME WAY. They were used only on the old strategy map. They were deprecated when the strategy map moved from HTML based to the higher-quality SVG format. The newer sets don't use these or include them at all. It's not recommended to bring them back; they won't translate well into PDF, where indicators are represented as single characters.

thanks

Hmmm...

Okay, pretend I have Measure X, which is a 'Descending - Lower is better' percentage type measure. The Measure Compare to Previous is like this:

Current % of Tgt: [43.9%]
Current Actual: 0.88%
Current Target: 2.00%
Previous % of Tgt: [52.4%]
Previous Actual: 1.05%
Previous Tgt: 2.00%
Variance: -8.5%
Trend: red down arrow

In this case, the 0.88% current actual is less than the 1.05% of the previous actual. The performance has improved, since the rate for Measure X is lower than it was. I think you might be saying that I should actually see a green up arrow instead of a red down arrow in this case?

Update:

I noticed that I was seeing red indicators next to the % of Tgt values for Current and Previous, even though the Actuals are lower than the Tgts. For some reason it never occured to me or anyone else around here that that is 100% wrong! I checked the measure metadata, and figured out that this is caused by the 'Calculating % Reached:' field being set to Use Basis Value with 0 as the Basis Value. If I set it to 100, I get a green performance trend arrow, and no indicator lights for % of Tgt.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and call this user error. Thanks for your time, Mr. Bob.

Cheers,

Joey