How to Create a Dimension

Overview

This video teaches you how to create a dimension in the Una application.

Facts to Remember

• Dimension name and type are locked after creation — to rename a dimension or change its type, you must delete and recreate it.
• A dimension member's name must be unique across the dimension; its caption does not (multiple members can share a caption).
• A dimension can have one or more hierarchies.

Transcript

In this video, we're going to go over how to create a new dimension in the Una application.

Let's start by navigating to the settings page.

Click on the gear in the top right-hand side.

This will bring us to the settings page.

On the left-hand side, click on the dimensions tab.

This will bring us to the dimensions page.

As you can see, our tenant is blank.

So let's create a new dimension by clicking on the add new button in the top right hand side.

This will bring us to the add new dimension dialog box.

Let's create an account dimension.

In the name field, we'll type in account.

Below that is the type selection.

There are special dimension types.

One of them is account.

The next we'll leave The non-leaf data member unchecked.

We don't have any translations, so we'll leave that blank as well.

And click save to create our new dimension.

On the right hand side, you have four icons.

The first one is the edit button.

This brings us the same dialog box we saw when creating our dimension.

The name and type are locked.

You cannot change those two elements of the dimension.

If you have to rename a dimension or change its type, you will have to delete the dimension and recreate it.

The next button brings up our hierarchy window.

This is where you can go to create a new alternate hierarchy.

It is also where you can set the default read and default write member.

So if a user creates an input or report, And they do not specify a specific member in that dimension.

The system will use the default read or the default write member.

Lastly, the last button is delete dimension.

This will delete your dimension.

Next, let's add some dimension members to our dimension.

To do so, click on the name of your dimension.

This will bring you to the dimension hierarchy window.

In this case, this is a brand new dimension.

There's no existing hierarchy.

The system has created a default member called none.

Let's start by creating our balance sheet and income statement members.

So we'll right click on account and choose add child.

There are a bunch of fields in this edit member pane.

The very top one is key.

That is a system ID.

You cannot edit that.

That is there for information purposes only.

The next field is the dimension member name.

Let's put balance sheet.

The dimension member name has to be unique.

You cannot have two members named balance sheet.

The next field is caption.

This is a secondary name or text field for the dimension member.

In this case, let's call it balance sheet as well.

Caption does not have to be unique.

So you can have multiple members with the captioned balance sheet.

Tag is a free form property.

We won't go into details on this specific video.

The next field is the operator field.

This controls how members are rolled up into their parents.

So in this case, we have three options.

Subtract, we'll subtract the value from the parent's total.

Plus, we'll add the member's value to the parent's total.

And then squiggly, we'll ignore that member's value when calculating that parent's total.

In this case, for balance sheet, we want plus.

The next four properties are, we can ignore.

Next, last one is time balance.

Time balance controls how this member interacts with the year-to-date and quarter-to-date functions.

The first option, sum.

So that means it will add the members together.

So if you choose March year-to-date and your member has the property sum, it will add up January, February, March to give you the total.

First, we'll give you the first member of the series.

So for the same example, March year to date, first we'll give you the value in January.

Last.

It gives you the last member in the series.

So for March year to date, it'll give you the value in March.

For the purpose of balance sheet, we are always storing ending balance.

So we want to choose last because we want whatever the final balance is, is in the last month of that series.

Let's click save.

And now let's also add our income statement parent.

And we'll call it, the caption the same.

We'll do plus for the operator.

In this case, for time balance, because we are only, we're storing activity for income statement, we want the sum.

All right, so let's fill this out a little bit.

We'll add our assets, plus as well, and last.

And we will add our liabilities and equity.

Oops.

Typed a little too fast there.

We'll change that to a minus because assets minus liabilities and equity give us a balanced account.

And we'll choose last as well.

There we go.

And then we'll add revenue.

And we'll choose sum as well for revenue.

And then we will do expenses.

And a minus and a sum.

So this rounds out our account dimension.

Let's create the rest of our dimensions that we want to use for our data model.

So I'll start off by creating an entity dimension.

This is a special type.

Next, we'll do scenario.

This is another special type.

And most data models will have a scenario dimension.

Same with time, so we'll call it period and choose the time type.

And then let's create a department dimension to round everything out.

There is no department type in the dropdown, so we will choose the generic type, which is the segment.

Okay, so now we have all of our dimensions created.

As with the account dimension, if you navigate to any of the dimensions, it'll start off with the dimension name as well as the default member none.

Time or period is a special case.

It will not create any new members by default.

The reason for this is due to the member keys and all the other dimensions.

The member keys are incremental.

So the very first member is going to be zero.

The next one is going to be one, two, so on and so forth.

The key for the period dimension has specific logic tied to the year and month number.

So generally, we use a SQL store procedure to help fill this out because it needs to follow that logic for the system to work.

We'll go over how to do that in a later video.

Now that we have all of our dimensions created, the next step would be to create our data model.

That wraps up our video on how to create dimensions.

Thank you for watching.

Related Articles

• Dimensions — every field on the dimension definition screen
• Hierarchy Manager — the written procedure for building and editing hierarchies
• Dimension Tables — how the dimension you just built is stored