Viewing the iMIS cube for ad-hoc analysis

If the predefined views in the iMIS Analytics Briefing Book for ProClarity Professional do not provide the specific iMIS business performance data that you would like to examine, you can use the Setup Panel feature of ProClarity Desktop Professional to create custom views of the measures and hierarchies available in the iMIS cube.

The following procedure uses one specific scenario to demonstrate how to create ad-hoc views of the iMIS cube using ProClarity Professional. You can adapt this procedure as necessary to perform ad-hoc analysis of other types of iMIS information.

Note: If you are not using the ProClarity Professional viewer, you must adapt this procedure as necessary for your choice of OLAP viewer. See your viewer's documentation for more information.

Before you begin

■    Analytics must be properly installed and configured, and the Analytics data warehouse and analysis database must be populated with data from the iMIS database. See Analytics implementation for more information.

■    ProClarity Professional must be installed on your computer.

■    The Analytics Briefing Book must have been installed on your computer. See Installing the Analytics Briefing Book on client computers for more information.

Scenario

In the following sample procedure, you want to analyze membership data that is not available as a default view in the Analytics Briefing Book. You use ProClarity Professional to create a new view that shows the total count of specific member types per calendar year, based on their membership subscription begin dates. Because this is a view you might want to review later, you then save the new view for easy access the next time you want to examine the same information.

To view the iMIS cube for ad-hoc analysis

Note: See your ProClarity Professional documentation for more information about performing the following steps.

1.  In ProClarity Professional, open the Analytics Briefing Book (iMIS Analytics.bbk).

2.  Find a pre-defined view that already uses the type of chart you think would be most appropriate for interpreting the membership data that you want to analyze. For example, the Membership Renewal Rates view uses a line chart that makes it easy to see growth trends, along with a supplemental grid that contains raw counts for each data point.

3.  From the main menu, choose View > Setup Panel.

The Setup Panel appears.

4.  In the Hierarchies tab, ensure that the Group Enrollment Fact measure group is the currently filtered list of available hierarchies and measures. If not, click the hierarchy filter beneath the tab name and choose Group Enrollment Fact from the resulting menu.

The list of available hierarchies in the Group Enrollment Fact measure group appears.

5.  Define the rows and columns of your new ad-hoc query.

□    Expand the Customer category and drag its Customer.Type hierarchy into the Rows list.

□    Drag all other existing hierarchies out of the Rows list.

The Rows list now contains only the Customer.Type hierarchy.

□    In the hierarchy list, expand the Date Begin category and drag its Date Begin.Calendar hierarchy into the Columns list.

□    Drag all other existing hierarchies out of the Columns list.

The Columns list now contains only the Date Begin.Calendar hierarchy.

6.  Refine the row and column hierarchies to include only the specific hierarchy members that you want to examine.

□    In the Rows list, right-click the Customer.Type hierarchy and choose Select Items.

The Select Items tab displays the levels and members of the Customer.Type hierarchy.

□    Expand the All level and multi-select the customer types that you want to examine (hold Ctrl while clicking each customer type in the list), ensuring that you first deselect the Default (All) level at the top of the list.  For example, you might select all of the following customer types:

■    Associate Member

■    Company Member

■    CPA Member

■    Individual Member

■    Student Member

□    In the Columns list, right-click the Date Begin.Calendar hierarchy and choose Select Items.

The Select Items tab displays the levels and members of the Date Begin.Calendar hierarchy.

□    Expand the All level and multi-select the specific calendar years that you want to examine, ensuring that you first deselect the Default (All) level at the top of the list.

7.  Define the measure to use for the background of the query.

□    In the Background list, right-click the currently-displayed measure and choose Select Items.

The Select Items tab displays the measures that are available in the Group Enrollment Fact measure group.

□    Select the Count measure.

8.  (optional) In the Columns list, click the Filter Empty Columns button to ensure that your query won't display years for which there is no data.

9.  From the main menu, select View > Apply Now.

The view displays your query results, using a line chart that enables you to see growth trends and a supplemental grid of tabular membership subscription begin counts for each year.

10. (optional) Change the chart style to a bar chart by right-clicking in the chart area and choosing Chart Type > Bar Chart.

The view displays a bar chart of the same data, which makes it easy to compare the ratio of membership subscription started in each calendar year.

11. You decide that you want to save this view for easy access in the future. You can do so by either saving it as a personal view under My Views, or by adding the view to the briefing book (which enables you to share it with others by giving them a copy of the briefing book).