Time Dimension Summary

[MarkTurkenburg]

Hi Team,

I have noticed that when referencing a module that has Time as a dimension from a module that does not have it as a dimension that the formula will not return the highest node in the Time Dimension

E.g. I have a Module with Employees & a Boolean line item and a Module with Employees & Time (with Summary as Sum) & a Number line item. If I enter a value into any of the Employee/Time intersections it will roll up to the 'All Periods' Time dimension. But if I then reference that employee from the original Module it will not return the All Dimensions value

I'm assuming I need to use SELECT:Time.'All Periods' in these circumstances?

Thanks

[nathan_rudman]

Hi,

yes you need to provide that to the formula, it will not default to it automatically.

[MarkTurkenburg]

Thanks Nathan

[Will12 · Accepted solution]

Hi Mark,

Just adding to what Nathan said – the reason for this is that although All Periods acts in some ways like a top level item, in other ways it acts like an orphan item in the time dimension. You can see this when you open a page selector – if it were a true top level item, you'd see the years rolling into All Periods, but instead you see All Periods as a detached item in the tree.

Thanks

Will

[MarkTurkenburg]

Great explanation Will - that makes sense as to why it doesn't roll up!

Mark

[nathan_rudman]

Hey goodpoint, I'm often wondering why it is not auto summing. Let me investigate I'll update you guys.

[DavidSmith · Accepted solution]

@MarkTurkenburg 

You can also use TIMESUM() to bring the values back and TIMESUM() is effectively the same as SELECT:Time.All Periods

They both perform almost identical aggregation

SELECT on a time-period has no overhead at all...it just points to the relevant block

So in fact, they should have identical performance

If you need to use the calculation more than once you can just SELECT it, rather than repeating the aggregation using TIMESUM so SELECT would be the best option.

However, All Periods obviously adds space to the model, and TIMESUM can be used more flexibly to return ranges of time if needed.

Hopefully that helps add some colour on the differences.

David

[MarkTurkenburg]

Thanks @DavidSmith!

Very helpful