Creating dimensional custom groups

Create custom groups to classify existing data items into groups that are meaningful to you.

You can reduce the number of values into smaller, more meaningful groups. For example, you can change a list of employees into my team and others.

When you are working with dimensional data and crosstabs or charts, you can create custom groups only on sets of members. After you create a custom group in a set, the members in the set are replaced by the custom groups.

When you create custom groups in a list, a new column is added to the report, with the name data_item (Custom). You can use this new column to group or sort the report. If you want to show only the new groups, you can delete the original column.

When you are creating custom groups on sets of members, consider the following constraints:

  • Members included in a custom group must be from the same level in a hierarchy.
  • If you insert a hierarchy that is used in a custom group elsewhere in the data container, it must be inserted as a sibling of the custom group.
  • Automatic aggregation on a custom group might not work as expected. For example, you might encounter error cells (- -).

Procedure

  1. To add custom groups in a crosstab or chart that includes sets of members, do the following steps:
    1. Select a set, click the More icon More icon in the application bar, and click Edit Set.
    2. Click the New icon new icon and select Custom Grouping.
    3. In the Custom grouping window, click the New Group Entry icon new icon.
    4. Type a name for the new group.
    5. Select members from the Available members list and move them to the Members list.
  2. To add custom groups to a list, do the following steps:
    1. Click the column that you want to group on, click the Show properties icon Show properties icon, and in the Properties pane, double-click the Set definition property.
      Tip: You can click either the column heading or one of the column cells.
    2. Click New Group Entry new icon.
    3. To group by values that you select, click New Select Values Group, type a New Group Name, select the required values from the Values box, and move the values to the Selected Values box.
    4. To group by a range of values, click New Range Group, type a New Group Name, and enter the From and To values.
  3. If you do not want a group name to be displayed for remaining values, select Do not show remaining values. Clicking this option produces empty cells for remaining values.
  4. If you want the group name for remaining values to match each value, select Use each remaining value as a group name.
  5. If you want to specify your own group name for all remaining values, select Group remaining values into a single group and type the name that you want.
  6. If you are adding custom groups in a list, under New data item name, select either the default data item name or type a new data item name.