In PMF, when I select Show Measures from the Scorecard summary, it takes me to the Measures screen with all the Dimensions listed on the left pane. Does anyone know of a way to either restict the dimensions shown to ones that apply to the Measures being accessed or a way of disabling Dimensions that aren't relavant for the active measure. When a number of measures exist, it is confusing for users to pick the right dimension.

In the Measure Details drill (I believe that's what you're referring to) PMF doesn't show a dimension linkage if a Dimension is not linked to a measure. That's as of the current, 4.2 release. If you don't want a Dimension to appear in the drilldown, simply remove it from the linkage and reload the measure.

However it's possible for a value in the hierarchy to be null; there are situations where there are no detail breakouts below a particular level. In that case PMF would let you drill down to that level and discover there's no actual data linked. In other words, the dimensional drills take their cue from the actual dimensional linkage and aren't yet data - sensitive. This is consistent with many OLAP query methods. However, it means sometimes your users might have a wasted click or two.

PMF lets you reduce the clicks your users need to do by "pre-drilling" to the data you want. There are three ways you can control this.

1. You can set up each measure to automatically drill to the most relevant dimension. You control this by setting the first dimensional linkage on the measure metadata screen (the Dimension box) to the letter representing that dimension. Then PMF will automatically pre-drill the detail view to that dimension.

2. If you are using gadget based dashboards, the gadget controls can be set to pre-drill to whatever dimension and level is desired on a user-by-user basis.

3. There is a default dimension/drill level setting in PMF settings that causes PMF to automatically drill down to a particular level of a dimension.

Hope these tips help. If you have ideas or suggestions, we're always open to them as well.

Thanks, but my real issue is prior to going into the Measure Details drill. Once I select the Scorecard I need (using Show Measures), I'd like only the dimensions relavant to that scorecard to show in the left-hand window that lists the Dimensions available in folders. Please let me know if this is available. Thanks.

OK, you must be using the measures prev. v. current or rolling 5 periods - I believe you're talking about the measure tree, yes?

Note that dimensions and measures are pooled across all scorecards, and it's possible for a scorecard to have many measures all linked to different dimensions. So the only way to handle this is to list all the dimensions available.

In the next version of PMF there's the capability to filter any scorecard against any and all dimensions; this will probably give you something very close to what you're looking for. So there's a feature coming up in the Summer release for you.

Hi Bob,

I'm in the same boat as Mike, in that I have two dimensions that I'd like to toggle between depending on what scorecard is chosen. They are both similar, but one affects a certain group of measures and the other affects the other group. The measure groupings will never cross scorecards, so if I could "toggle" between the two when I switch scorecards, that would be ideal.

Any way to filter that dimension tree at the code level? Any way to do a conditional filter based on the value of the scorecard name?

Any help you could give would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Joey

Hi Again,

To add a little more information to my previous question:

-I built two identical dimensions; Dim X and Dim Y
-I loaded Measure 1 twice; once associated with Dim X and another time associated with Dim Y
-I loaded Measure 2 once, associated with Dim X
-Scorecard A shows Measures 1 & 2 (tied to Dim X) and Scorecard B only shows Measure 1 (tied to Dim Y)
-For Scorecard A, I use Dim X to filter Measures 1 & 2 to a particular level (group of products)
-For Scorecard B, I use Dim Y to filter Measure 1 to a higher level (shows more groups of products)
-I built an access role that filters the user to the desired level with one dimension and to the higher level with the other

"But Joey, Isn't that redundant?" you ask. The requirement was to have a type of user that wears two hats. One hat controls several measures for a group of products, and the other hat shows one of those measures for a bigger group of products.

As it stands now, this works well as a security model. I can restrict a user to Scorecard A and/or Scorecard B, I can let them see the "same" measure at different levels while still restricting all the other measures to just one level.

The only issue is that both the dims show at all times in the Dimension tree, but one works for one scorecard and the other works for the other. It's not clear to the user which to use, and I'd love to do any of the following to fix this:

• only show Dim X when SC A is displayed and only Dim Y when SC B is displayed
  
• Show neither Dim X or Dim Y, and let the user do all filtering via drill-downs. I must still show the Time Dim, though
  

Please advise.

Joey

But Joey, isn't that redundant? Kidding. It looks like people just love that Dimension tree, even though it's only used in 3 out of 120 PMF reports. Ah well...

Right now PMF always shows all the top leaves of each dimensions in that tree. There's no way today to say "this dimension should never show up" because that report you're looking at actually is showing many many measures at the same time. Some of these measures might be unfilters (row security unchecked). PMF does not today query every single measure before displaying the tree to see if it's been linked to a particular dimension, or the tree would perform worse than it does (and there are some complaining it's not fast enough now).

PMF however does restrict the leaves shown for each dimension according to security if it's set to G (Global) mode. If it's set to O (Off) mode it won't restrict. (There's a third mode, S, that says security isn't user-based but Scorecard based, and we don't think that's what you want here).

Hope this helps with your question.