Use parent-child hierarchies to structure your data into parent-child relationships.
When the data is displayed in a story, hierarchies can be expanded or collapsed.
Context
You can create a parent-child hierarchy during the
data-preparation stage, or in the Modeler.
Procedure
To create a parent-child hierarchy in the data-preparation
stage
Follow these steps to create a parent-child hierarchy during
data preparation. Creating a hierarchy here, instead of in the Modeler, is
faster and more automated, but to make adjustments, or to add or delete members
from the hierarchy, you'll need to use the Modeler.
-
Start creating a model.
After the initial raw data import, you'll see the data integration view,
where you perform data preparation before creating the model.
-
Select the column that you want to be the child in the parent-child
hierarchy.
For example, if you're creating a geography hierarchy, with Country as the
parent and City as the child, select the City column. Note that you can change
the column name by double-clicking the column header.
-
In the Details panel, select Add Dimension
Attributes.
-
Select Parent-Child Hierarchy (Parent).
-
In the Select parent list, choose the column that you
want to be the parent in the hierarchy.
The column's icon changes to show that it's now the parent in the
hierarchy.
-
Repeat the above steps if you want to create more parent-child
hierarchies.
Note
The parent and child columns don't need to represent levels in a
hierarchy. For example, if you're setting up a hierarchy similar to a
company org chart, the columns could contain data like this:
Child |
Parent |
John |
Mary (John's manager) |
Pierre |
Mary (Pierre's manager) |
Mary |
Joanna (Mary's manager) |
Kevin |
Joanna (Kevin's manager) |
Otto |
Kevin (Otto's manager) |
If you do want to set up a level-based hierarchy though, see Creating a Level-Based Hierarchy.
Note
If a column is mapped to a hierarchy parent of a dimension, an empty cell
in that column means that the corresponding dimension member doesn't have a
parent in that hierarchy. In other words, that member is a top-level node of
the hierarchy.
For example, if you have the following columns, the
resulting hierarchy will have A as the top-level node, with two child
nodes A1 and A2:
Product (child) |
Product group (parent) |
A1 |
A |
A2 |
A |
A |
|
The dimension member A still belongs to the hierarchy. If
you want a newly created dimension member to be excluded from a
hierarchy of that dimension, don't map the hierarchy to a
column.
-
Select Create Model.
In the Modeler, you now see the dimensions and attributes of your model,
including the hierarchy you created. If you want to make any changes to the
hierarchy, see the following steps.
To create a parent-child hierarchy in the
Modeler
The steps below describe how to create a parent-child
hierarchy in the Modeler, or to make adjustments, or to add or delete members
from the hierarchy.
-
Import data and create your model, or open an existing model.
-
Switch to the Model view.
-
Open a dimension.
-
In the Dimension Settings panel, select .
If other parent-child hierarchies already exist, select
beside
Hierarchies in the Dimension Settings
panel.
-
Type a name for the parent of the hierarchy, type a description (optional), and
then select Done.
The new hierarchy is added as a new column for the dimension.
-
Switch to the grid view, and then type or paste data into the cells of the
parent column.
Note
All nodes in a parent-child hierarchy also need to be valid dimension
members. Therefore, any values that you add to the parent column must
also exist in the Member ID column.
In the following example, you need to add the
Joanna row, where xyz
is a unique identifier:
Member ID |
Description |
Hierarchy Parent |
a123 |
John |
c345 |
b234 |
Pierre |
c345 |
c345 |
Mary |
xyz |
d456 |
Kevin |
xyz |
e567 |
Otto |
d456 |
xyz |
Joanna |
|
Note that if you create this hierarchy in the data-preparation stage, you
don't need to include the Joanna row in your
source data; the application creates it automatically.
-
Select (Hierarchy
Management) in the toolbar to open the Hierarchy
Maintenance view.
Here, you can drag members to correct any errors or to refine your hierarchy.
The changes are reflected automatically in the grid.
-
You can also make changes directly in the grid, such as adding or deleting
members from the hierarchy.
For example, if you want to add Fernando, whose manager is Kevin, type
Fernando in the Description
column, and then type a unique identifier in the ID
column. In the Preview panel, drag Fernando under Kevin,
or type d456 manually in the Parent column.