Typically, a dimension selection can be linked to a filter to display the relevant elements. In Financial Reporting, this is important because it allows the user to make the selection via a filter rather than having to access the report definition every year.
Example:
The report then responds to the filter by displaying the selected year and the four preceding years—along with all the metrics at the next level.
However, certain metrics do not make sense for years prior to the previous year, which is where using tuples comes in handy. As soon as you switch to tuples, all the years and metrics are carried over and displayed in the list. You can then remove the specific metrics that you do not want to include for a given year.
This is most used in financial reports, when you need i.e. the actuals only in previous years and the plan, actual and deviation for the current year.
However, the years are now "fixed" and can no longer be selected via the slicer / filter.
This means that the report needs to be adapted each year and not be used with a slicer.
Improvement suggestion / features request:
In the tuple definition frame it should be possible not only to select fix elements, but to use a slicer and a function as well, i.e. previous element, the pre-previus element etc.
Most important for the time dimension.
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Thomas
