How Models and Dimensions Work

Overview

This video explains the two building blocks used throughout Una: dimensions, which is used to categorize your data (account, time, department, scenario, sales stage, etc.), and data models used to store your data. This video walks through a live example to show how the two concepts come together in practice.

Facts to Remember

• A dimension categorizes your data element (e.g. account, time, department, cost center, sales stage)
• A Data Model Models must have an Account, Scenario and Time dimension.
• Dimensions can can be shared across multiple models.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another Getting Started with Una video.

Today we're going to talk about dimensions and models.

So Una is obviously a high caliber performance planning and RevIQ software solution that allows us to integrate and output data from any type of data source.

In these data sources we find different types of categories of information and we create those into models or sometimes referred to as cubes.

Model is really about how users interact with data in the canvas.

You can imagine a spreadsheet where you've got a connection to maybe some ERP data.

So you're going to have your accounts.

That would be a dimension.

You're going to have your time.

That would be a dimension.

You're going to have potentially a cost center or a business unit or a company, whatever that might be.

All those things collectively are a model.

So sometimes you can think of your existing spreadsheet as the model itself.

Models contain any number of dimensions.

Usually there's a logical limit of what we want users to be able to see or how they want them to interact.

And again, those models can have sources that come from your ERP, your customer relationship management data, or your CRM, or any other type of operational source.

A dimension is all around you know that categorization of that data element or how you categorize the data elements so in many cases as we said una has any number of dimensions that you might use we've got some specific types of like account or time or scenario or stage if you're doing rev iq and it helps us understand what that data is all about or how to categorize that data and uh you know dimensions can automatically be Updated and uploaded during the data ingestion process coming from one or more sources and also be shared against many models.

So let's take a very quick peek into Una and see what I mean by this.

So we're just going to change to our browser.

We're going to log in.

Once we're logged in, we click on our little cog window.

It will take us automatically to the models.

In my demo model sets here, you can see I have something called Strive Sports.

So this might be a new business unit that we're Looking at, it has dimensions like department, products, channel, currency, and some of those core four that we normally use in almost every model.

We also have a model that's connected to our revenue intelligence that might have our account owner or the different stage of the sales cycle or marketing cycle we might be on.

These are the collections.

It's very easy to add any dimension.

From your list of dimensions, this is the available list based on what's not already in this model.

And as mentioned, you have the ability to categorize or leverage dimensions however you want, as many as you want, across any different level.

And you have the ability to see what those hierarchical views of information might look like.

And of course, with things like your income, you're actually seeing sort of the roll-up of how your income statement, your balance sheet, or cash flow might work.

And you have things like your drivers, so different types of drivers that you might be using for different types of data input.

That's a little bit on what dimensions and models are all about.

And obviously, what we're trying to do is help you get started as quickly as possible.

So we've built this little template for ourselves to ask, what are those dimensions?

We'll ask what the models are in your first kickoff call or the types of areas you're going to focus on.

But if you could start going down the path of adding where you think those dimensions are and what those sources might be, then that will greatly increase our opportunity to move as fast as possible.

Thank you again for watching a Getting Started with Una video.

Have a great afternoon, morning, or evening, whenever you're watching this.

Related Articles

• Key Concepts — written definitions of every term used in the video
• Architecture — how the pieces fit together underneath
• Models — the settings screen for defining a model