Introducton To Analytics Reporting 10 4 PDF

Introduction to
Analytics Reporting
10.4
CONTENTS
1. Foundation for
Creating Reports
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 4
Calculating business data: Metrics....................................................................... 6
Business context on a report: Attributes ........................................................... 6
Attribute elements............................................................................................. 7
Attribute forms.................................................................................................... 8
Grouping related attributes: Hierarchies................................................... 8
Drilling into related data................................................................................10
Exercise 1.1: Report basics ....................................................................................12
Exercise 1.2: Report data manipulation............................................................27
2. Creating Reports
Overview .....................................................................................................................34
Building reports based on pre-designed reports .........................................36
Categories of pre-designed reports ..........................................................36
Building reports using templates.......................................................................37
Exercise 2.1: Create a report using the Employee Analysis template.
39
Building reports from scratch ..............................................................................45
Exercise 2.2: Create a simple report from scratch.................................46
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. 1

Contents Introduction to Analytics Reporting
3. Creating Objects for

Reports
Filters, Prompts, Overview .....................................................................................................................50
Metrics, Attribute
Building filters to filter data on reports ............................................................51
Groups
Viewing filter details: Report Details pane ..............................................53
View filters...........................................................................................................54
Exercise 3.1: Create a view filter ..................................................................55
Report filters.......................................................................................................59
Exercise 3.2: Create a report filter in a report .........................................64
Exercise 3.3: Create stand-alone filters .....................................................67
Building prompts to allow user input...............................................................74
Prompt types .....................................................................................................76
Prompt creation................................................................................................80
Exercise 3.4: Create prompts to use in a filter ........................................81
Exercise 3.5: Create object prompts to select the objects displayed
on a report ..........................................................................................................88
Building metrics to calculate data......................................................................93
Level of calculation for a metric..................................................................96
Exercise 3.6: Create simple metrics............................................................98
Compound metrics: Metrics made up of other metrics ...................104
Exercise 3.7: Create compound metrics and smart totals................105
Selecting subtotals and totals for metrics.............................................110
Exercise 3.8: Display subtotals ...................................................................111
Derived metrics.......................................................................................................114
Exercise 3.9: Create a derived metric.......................................................114
Additional advanced metric options ..............................................................117
VLDB properties ..............................................................................................117
Joins ....................................................................................................................118
Creating attribute categorizations...................................................................119
Custom groups................................................................................................119
Exercise 3.10: Create a custom group.....................................................120
Derived elements ...........................................................................................123
Exercise 3.11: Create derived elements..................................................124
4. Delivering and
Sharing Reports
Exporting reports ...................................................................................................130
Subscribing to reports for automatic delivery.............................................132
Exercise 4.1: Deliver a report to your History List on a schedule ..........132
Sharing reports with other users ......................................................................135
2 © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Contents
Sending reports and bursting large reports into smaller files .......136
Sharing a link URL reflecting latest changes and prompt answers.....
139
5. Visualizations
Overview ...................................................................................................................144
Connect to your data ............................................................................................145
Visualize your data.........................................................................................151
Connect to your data - Part II .............................................................................157
Prepare Your Data - Part II...........................................................................158
Visualize your data.........................................................................................162
A. Export Options Export options for grid reports..........................................................................173

Export options for graph reports......................................................................175
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. 3

1
FOUNDATION FOR CREATING
REPORTS
Overview
MicroStrategy Web is a highly interactive, intuitive, and simple-to-use interface
for reporting, analysis, and continuous business monitoring. With a look and feel
that is exceptionally crisp and clean, MicroStrategy Web has been designed
specifically to fit the needs of business users.
Reports are the focus of business intelligence analysis. They enable you to gather
business insight through data analysis. The results from any MicroStrategy Web
report are often just a starting point for further business intelligence
investigations. To create a simple report, you typically place at least one attribute,
one metric, and a filter on the report. Objects placed on a report determine what
data is gathered from your data source, how that data is calculated, and how the
results are displayed when each report is run.
Example of a simple report, with one attribute and one metric
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Overview 4

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Foundation for Creating Reports 1
The most common objects on reports are:
• Metrics: A metric represents a business measure or key performance

indicator, such as Revenue, Profit, Employee Headcount, or Probability of
Purchase. From a practical perspective, metrics are the calculations performed
on data stored in your database, the results of which are displayed on a report.
A metric on a report shows a list of values used for analytical calculations.
When you are designing a report, a metric is displayed with this icon: .
• Attributes: An attribute represents a business concept, such as Product,

Employee, Month, and so on. Attributes provide a context for the data
calculations (metrics) that are usually the core of any business reporting.
Attributes based on the data in your data source are generally created by your
organization’s project designer. An attribute on a report serves as a label for a
group of metric values.
When you are designing a report, an attribute is displayed with this icon: .
• Filters: A filter sifts the data in your data source to bring back the information
that answers exactly what you require.
A filter is displayed with this icon in Web: .
Not all of these components are required, but the data returned is often more
meaningful when you use them.
You place the attributes, metrics, and filters into a report template. A report
template containing objects specifies what information to retrieve from your data
warehouse and how this information is displayed in the report results.
When a report is executed, you see a formatted collection of all of the data
associated with the objects (the attributes and metrics) specified on the template
that have satisfied the filtering conditions of the report filter and any prompts the
user answered. For example, a report can show you a list of stores in a specific
region, the price and volume of stock for a given period of time, or other
important information. You can change the report’s formatting details to suit your
requirements and preferences.
Formatted simple report

1 Foundation for Creating Reports Introduction to Analytics Reporting
Calculating business data: Metrics

Metrics are MicroStrategy objects that represent business measures and key
performance indicators. From a practical perspective, metrics are the calculations
performed on data stored in your database, the results of which are displayed on
a report. Metrics are similar to formulas in spreadsheet software. The metric in the
following report is Profit.
Metrics Example
Most of the decisions you make about the other objects to include on a report
depend on the metrics you use on the report. Questions such as “What were the
sales for the eastern region during the fourth quarter?” or “Are inventory counts
being consistently replenished at the beginning of each week?” can easily be
answered by metrics.
Specifically, metrics define the analytical calculations to be performed against

data that is stored in your data sources. A metric is made up of data source facts
and the mathematical operations to be performed on those facts, so that
meaningful business analysis can be performed on the results. A metric on a
report shows a list of values used for analytical calculations.
Business context on a report: Attributes

Attributes are the business concepts reflected in your stored business data in your
data source. Attributes provide a context in which to report on and analyze
business facts or calculations. While knowing your company’s total sales is useful,
6 Calculating business data: Metrics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

knowing where and when the sales took place provides the kind of analytical
depth users require on a daily basis.
Attributes Example
In the example above, the report contains the Region and Call Center attributes,
as well as a Profit metric. When executed, the report displays your company’s
profit for each geographical region, broken down further based on call center
locations. Because of the attributes on the report, a substantial amount of
information is available, including which regions produced the lowest profit and
which call centers saw the highest profit. If you remove the attributes from the
report, you can only find out how much profit the company made in total. An
attribute on a report serves as a label for specifically calculated metric values.
As you can see in the image above, when you place attributes on a report, you
should choose attributes that make sense together when they are on the same
report.
Attribute elements
The elements of a business attribute are the unique values for that attribute. For
example, 2015 and 2016 are elements of the Year attribute, while New York and
London are elements of the City attribute. On a report, attributes are chosen to
build the report, but once the report is executed, the attribute’s elements are
displayed in the rows or columns.
In the image above, Call Center is an attribute whose elements include

Milwaukee, Fargo, Washington DC, and Charleston, which are specific names of
various call centers. The Region attribute has attribute elements such as Central,
Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and so on.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Business context on a report: Attributes 7

Attribute forms
Attribute forms are additional descriptive information about a business attribute.
Attribute forms are mapped to columns in your data source. The ID column in
your data source provides a unique identifier for each attribute element, and the
Description column provides the name of each attribute element. In
MicroStrategy, only the IDs are used to identify the datasets to find corresponding
parent-child relationships for calculation purposes. The ID and the Description are
both attribute forms.
But an attribute can have many other forms. For example, the attribute Customer
has the forms ID, Last Name, First Name, Address, and Email, as shown below. A
form is a descriptive category for any data your organization saves about any of its
attributes.
Attribute Forms Example
Report designers and project designers can decide which form of an attribute to
display on a report. For example, in some circumstances, displaying the attribute’s
ID is more useful for certain users, such as a project designer. For most users,
displaying the Description form of an attribute is more useful. However, as you
can see with the example of the Customer attribute above, displaying several
attribute forms might be most useful, depending on user needs.
Grouping related attributes: Hierarchies

Data must be calculated within the context of a business attribute—but which
attribute? Most reports contain more than one attribute. For example, on a report
containing the Revenue metric and the attributes Month and Year, is revenue
calculated and displayed by month? Or is it calculated and displayed by year?
Another way to ask this question is, at what level is the Revenue metric
calculated? Is it calculated at the higher-level Year attribute or the lower-level
8 Business context on a report: Attributes © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Month attribute? To understand an attribute’s level, picture a hierarchy of related

business attributes. An example is shown below:
Year Hierarchy
The example above shows a hierarchy of all the attributes that relate to the
business concept of Time. (These attributes and this Time hierarchy are part of the
sample Tutorial project.) The attribute Year is higher than Quarter, Month, or Day,
because it appears above those other attributes. The highest level attribute is
usually the attribute that reflects the most-inclusive business concept. In this
hierarchy, Day is the lowest-level attribute and reflects the least-inclusive or most
granular business concept.
In another example, suppose that your company is an Internet-based retailer and

has its call centers all over the U.S. Your company therefore stores its employee
data in your data source within the concept of geographical regions within the
U.S. The related business attributes within this idea of geographical region

become part of the Geography hierarchy. An example using sample data from the
Tutorial project is shown below:
Geography Hierarchy
In the Geography hierarchy above, Country is the highest-level attribute and

Employee is the lowest-level attribute.
Drilling into related data

When you drill on a report, you view the report data at a level other than what is
originally displayed in the report. It allows you to retrieve more information after a
report has been executed, to investigate the data quickly and easily. Drilling
automatically executes another report based on the original report to get more
detailed or supplemental information.
10 Business context on a report: Attributes © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

For example, refer to the Geography hierarchy shown above. A report displays
profit values for the Region attribute, as shown below:
Regional Revenue Report
From Region, you can drill up to Country, to display revenue values for each
country.
Revenue Report by Country
To drill, you right-click an attribute element or attribute header, and select the
destination. For example, to drill from Region to Country, right-click Region, point
to Drill, and select Country.
Drilling from Region to Country
If the Drill option is not available on the right-click menu, the report designer has
disabled the function on the report. A report designer can also restrict the drilling
destinations.

From Region, you can drill down to Call Center or Employee.

Revenue Report by Call Center
You can also drill across to another hierarchy. From Region, you can drill across to
Category, in the Products hierarchy.
Revenue Report by Category
Exercise 1.1: Report basics

The goal of this exercise is to become familiar with MicroStrategy Web’s report
development environment, screen navigation, basic use of Web’s report
development functionality, along with executing and then modifying a basic
pre-designed report using attributes and metrics. As part of this exercise, you will
first learn how to access your Secure Cloud environment. The login credentials
and other information you will need for accessing your environment is included in
the email titled “Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud” that you received from
securecloud@microstrategy.com.
12 Exercise 1.1: Report basics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

In the following exercise, you will perform the following:
• Access MicroStrategy Web in your Secure Cloud environment
• Open a pre-designed report
• Modify the report by adding additional attributes and metrics
• View the report in Grid, Graph, and Grid/Graph modes
• Drill into the report to view a different level of data
Detailed instructions
Access your Secure Cloud environment
1 In the Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email, click Access

MicroStrategy.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Exercise 1.1: Report basics 13

The MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page opens in a browser window of

your local computer.
2 Scroll to the bottom of the landing page and copy the Remote Desktop Client
name listed under MicroStrategy Developer & Tools Machine Name. For
example, in the following image, the Remote Desktop Client name is
test-env-1198-rdp.customer.cloud.microstrategy.com.
3 Log into the Windows machine in your cloud environment using Remote
Desktop Connection. To do so, on your local Windows machine, on the Start
menu, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and select Remote
Desktop Connection.
4 In the Remote Desktop Connection window, in the Computer Name box,

paste the machine name and click Connect.

5 In the Windows Security box, type the login and password for your remote
desktop machine, then click OK.
The login and the password provided are provided in the Welcome to
MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email.
6 If you get a message regarding the identity of remote desktop not being
verified, click Yes.
You will be connected to the Windows machine in your Secure Cloud

environment.

7 On the Windows desktop, click the shortcut for Google Chrome.
Close Chrome’s initial Welcome window, if displayed, to access the main

browser window.
You do not need to set Google Chrome as the default browser.
8 In the Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email, click Access

MicroStrategy. The MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page opens in the
browser window of your local computer.
9 Copy the URL of your MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page.

10 In the Chrome browser’s address bar, paste the URL of your MicroStrategy
Secure Cloud landing page and press ENTER.
11 On the authentication page, click Credentials.
The system displays the option to log in.
12 In the User name and Password boxes, type (or copy and paste) the login
credentials provided in the Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email.
13 Click Login. The MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page displays in the
browser of your Secure Cloud environment.

14 On the landing page, press the Shift key and click MicroStrategy Web to
open MicroStrategy Web in a new browser window.
The MicroStrategy Web page displays, with you logged into the MicroStrategy
Tutorial project.
Open the Regional Profit and Margins report
1 In the MicroStrategy Tutorial project, click the Shared Reports icon .
2 Click the Subject Areas folder, then the Enterprise Performance

Management folder.

3 Click the Regional Profit and Margins report to open it. The report should
look like this:
4 Locate the attributes in the report. Attributes can reside in both rows and
columns. In this report, the Region and Call Center attributes are displayed in
the rows, while the Year attribute is shown in the columns.
5 Locate the metrics in the report. Metrics can reside in both rows and columns.
This report’s metrics, which are all displayed in the columns, are Profit and

Profit Margin. The metrics are repeated for each year, but calculate different
values.
Add attributes and metrics to the report
1 Add an attribute to the rows of the report:
a The pane on the left currently displays the Report Objects, which are the
objects in the report. Display all the objects in the project instead, by
clicking the All Objects tab at the bottom of the left pane.
b In the All Objects pane, click Attributes, then click Geography.

c Select and drag Country onto the report grid; drop the attribute when the
yellow positioning line is displayed vertically at the far left edge of the
Region rows, as shown below:
Country is now displayed at the far left of the report:
2 Add another attribute to the columns:
a In the All Objects pane on the left, click the Up One Level icon , to
return to the Attributes folder.
b Click the Time folder.

c Select and drag Quarter to the columns in the grid report, below Year. A
yellow object positioning line displays horizontally, as shown in the
example below:
3 Add a metric to the columns:
a In the All Objects pane, select Metrics from the drop-down list.
b Click Sales Metrics.

c Select and drag Revenue to the right of Profit in the report grid, as shown
in the image below.
Your report should look like the following. Notice that only one year of data is
displayed. At the top right of the report, the number of rows and columns are
provided. Only 10 of the 36 columns are displayed. To view additional
columns not visible on the right side of the report, click the More Columns
icon .
How much revenue did Boston generate in the third quarter of 2013?

Save the modified report as your own report
1 Click the Save icon . In the Save As window, from the Save In drop-down
list, select My Reports.
2 In the Name box, type Yearly Regional Profit and Revenue, then
click OK.
3 In the Report Saved window, click Run newly saved report.
View the report as a grid, a graph, and both a grid and a graph
1 The report originally displayed as a grid, but you can view it as a graph instead.
On the toolbar, click the Graph icon. Your report should look like the
following. Notice that this graph includes two quarters of data for six call
centers. For more quarters and call centers, display other pages and data
columns.
Q: Which region on this page of the graph has the lowest profit? Highest profit?
Use a graph report to more easily recognize overall trends in your data than a
grid report. Use a grid report to view very detail of the data, instead of trends.

2 View the report as both a grid and a graph at the same time. Click the Grid
And Graph icon on the toolbar. Your report should like this:
Drill into the report to view a different level of data
1 In the Call Center column of the grid report, drill down into details of the data
by clicking the attribute element Milwaukee. Along with the change in the
grid report data, the graph display of the data automatically updates based on

your selection. Your report should like this, displaying data for the employees
in the Milwaukee call center:
The drill action is displayed in the file path at the top of the interface. You have
drilled from the Regional Profit and Margins report down to Employee.
2 Return to the original report results by clicking the Back icon in the file path.
3 Click the Grid icon to return to the grid view of the report.
4 To view the report for all employees, not just those in the Milwaukee call
center, right-click the Call Center header, point to Drill, and select Employee.

5 You can drill on multiple attribute elements, such as multiple call centers.
Press CTRL while clicking Fargo and Washington, DC. Right-click the
selections, point to Drill, and select Distribution Center.
The resulting report displays information for the distribution centers for the
selected call centers.
Q: Which Fargo or Washington, DC employee had the highest profit in 2013?
Exercise 1.2: Report data manipulation

In this exercise, we will manipulate a pre-designed report to display data in
different ways for analysis. The data manipulations include:
• Pivot the report data. Move the Quarter attribute to the columns. Swap the
rows and columns to move the Call Center attribute to the columns and the
Quarter attribute to the rows.
Pivoting lets you rearrange the columns and rows in a report so that you can
view data from different perspectives. You can move an object from a row to a
column, a column to a row, and change the order of objects in rows or
columns.
All metrics are kept together, so they are moved as a group when you pivot
data. For a graph report, you cannot move one metric to a row and another to
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Exercise 1.2: Report data manipulation 27

a column. For graph reports, metrics must all be together on only one axis. To
pivot metric data, select Metric in the header to move all the metrics together.
• Page the report by the Call Center attribute.
Page-by turns a long report into a set of individual pages, allowing you to
focus on one page (or subset of data) at a time. Page-by makes viewing a large
report easier than scrolling through long lists of data. You can page by
attributes; each page of the report will contain data for one attribute element
(each city, for example). You can also select the report’s metrics, as a group
(not individual metrics); each page of the report will contain data for one
metric.
• Drill on the entire report from the Quarter attribute to the Subcategory
attribute.
Drilling allows you to view the report at another level of detail.
• Change the background fill of the Revenue metric to grey.
Formatting a report allows you to accentuate data to enhance analysis, as well

as changing the overall display or look and feel of a report. For example, you
can highlight important numbers, put the focus on specific sets of data,
rename an object, and apply your corporate look. Applying a band of color to
a group of rows or columns, such as the Revenue metric, can make large
quantities of data easier to analyze.
• Save this report with a different name.
Open the report
2 Click Subject Areas, then Sales and Profitability Analysis.
28 Exercise 1.2: Report data manipulation © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

3 Click the report named Revenue, Costs, and Units Sold by Call Center to run
it. (The report sample shown below displays only a portion of the report.)
Pivot data to move attributes
Move Quarter from rows to columns
1 Right-click the Quarter row header, point to Move, and select To Columns.

The report should look like the following sample.
Swap the rows and columns
2 Click the Data menu to display the Data toolbar.
3 On the Data toolbar, click the Swap Rows and Columns icon .
The Call Center attribute is moved to the columns, and the Quarter attribute
to the rows. Note that the metrics do not move in the swap; they are still
displayed in the columns.

Page the report by the Call Center attribute
1 Right-click the Call Center column header, point to Move, and select To
Page-by Axis.
The report should look like the following. Notice the Page-By pane, which now
displays Call Center. Atlanta is selected, but you can display another call center
by selecting it from the drop-down list. Notice that the metric values are the
same as those listed for Atlanta in the previous report samples.
Drill from Quarter to Subcategory
1 Right-click the Quarter row header, point to Drill, point to Products, and
select Subcategory.

The resulting report is shown below. The quarters displayed previously on the
column headers have been replaced by subcategories.
Format the Revenue metric with a grey background
1 Right-click the Revenue column header and select Advanced Formatting.
2 In the Format: Template window, confirm that the first drop-down list shows
Revenue and the second drop-down list shows Values.
These lists allow you to format different areas of the report. Click the first list,
to view your options. Each object in the report is listed, as well as different
areas such as grid borders, grid cells, and all metrics. Keep the selection at
Revenue. Click the second list, to view your options. For a metric, you can
format the header, the values, or all. For other objects, you can also format
subtotal values or names. Do not change the selection from Values.
3 Click the Color and Lines tab.

4 From the Fill Color palette, select Grey-25%., then click OK.
Your results should look like the following:
Notice that the column of Revenue values has a grey background, but the
headers are still blue. If you want to change the Metric headers, select
Revenue and Header in the Format toolbar, click the Fill Color icon, and select
Grey-25%, as shown below:
Save the report
1 Click the Save As icon in the toolbar.
2 Save the report in the My Reports folder, named Revenue, Costs, and
Units Sold by Call Center and Subcategory.
3 Close the report.

2
CREATING REPORTS
Overview
You can create a report in MicroStrategy Web using any of these methods:
• Using a pre-designed report by either:


Using one of the pre-designed reports that come out of the box with
MicroStrategy
 Saving a pre-designed report to your My Reports folder and creating a
new report based on it
• Using a pre-made template
• Starting from scratch with a blank report
You use the Report Editor to create a new report or modify an existing report. The
Report Editor displays the report as it will be seen by the user and includes
toolbars, menus, and panels that allow you to change how the report is displayed.

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Creating Reports 2
A new report automatically opens in Design Mode of the Report Editor. Design
Mode allows you to create or edit the report’s template and definition. A report’s
definition is the definitions of all the objects that are included on the report when
the report is designed, as well as any formatting applied to the report.
Report Editor: Design Mode
These are the panes of the Report Editor that you use most frequently when you
start creating reports:
• All Objects pane: Lets you search for and select objects within the project, to
add them to the report.
• Report Objects pane: Displays all objects included in the report, even if the
object is not displayed on the report’s grid or graph.
From the accordion list on the bottom left, select the pane to display. In the
image above, the All Objects pane is displayed to allow you to select objects
to add to the report. Since no objects have been added to the report yet (the
Template pane is blank), the Report Objects pane will also be blank.
• Report Filter pane: Use to add filtering conditions to a report. Simple filters
can be conveniently created by dragging and dropping objects from the All
Objects pane into this pane to create a filter for the report data.
• View filter pane: Lets users apply a filter on-the-fly to any attribute or metric
on the report. A view filter is applied to the executed report. Since the report
does not have to be re-executed against the data source, view filters can help
improve report execution performance. In addition, multiple reports can be
created from the same parent report.

2 Creating Reports Introduction to Analytics Reporting
If you are familiar with SQL, view filters do not modify the SQL for the report like
normal report filters do. Instead, view filters are applied to the overall result set
after the SQL is executed and results are returned from the data source.
• Page-By pane: Use to create separate pages, or subsets of your report results.
Drag and drop objects from the All Objects pane into this pane to create
pages.
• Template pane: Allows you to define your report layout by dragging and
dropping objects from the All Objects pane onto this report template pane.
Reports can be executed and viewed in the Report Editor or in other applications.
Building reports based on pre-designed reports

The MicroStrategy Tutorial project includes sample data, such as actual customer
names and items purchased, as well as predesigned sample reports. The
reporting areas are grouped logically so you can see reports based on business
roles, MicroStrategy platform capabilities, or various subject areas such as
customer analysis, inventory and supply chain analysis, sales and profitability
analysis, and so on.
You can build a report based on a pre-designed report by either:
• Using one of the pre-designed reports that come out of the box with
MicroStrategy
You did this when you opened the Regional Profit and Margins report in
Exercise 1.1: Report basics.
• Saving a pre-designed report to your My Reports folder and creating a new

report based on it
You did this in Exercise 1.1: Report basics when you added attributes and
metrics to the Regional Profit and Margins report, and then saved it as Yearly
Regional Profit and Revenue.
Categories of pre-designed reports

Pre-designed reports are saved in the following subfolders in the Shared Reports
folder of the Tutorial project:
• Business Roles: Contains reports for different types of business intelligence

users, such as billing managers, brand managers, company executives, sales
managers, and operations managers. For example, brand managers can see a
report for Brand Performance by Region. A billing manager can see data in a
36 Building reports based on pre-designed reports © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

report called Invoice Statements by Selected Customers, as well as a

customer-level transaction detail report.
• Documents and Scorecards: Contains several examples of dashboard

documents. They provide a distilled view of the business, organized in logical
sections, often containing interactive visualizations and other adaptive
features.
• Enterprise Reporting Documents: Contains examples of different types of

enterprise reporting documents, such as scorecards and dashboards,
managed metrics reports, production and operational reports, invoices and
statements, and business reports. The documents in this folder are a sample of
the types of documents that can be built using MicroStrategy Report Services.
• MicroStrategy Platform Capabilities: Contains examples of the

sophisticated capabilities within the MicroStrategy platform. Use the reports
and documents to get a better feel for platform functionality. For example, the
Graph Styles folder contains examples of most of the graph types that can be
created in MicroStrategy. The Ad Hoc Reporting folder shows examples of
commonly used features like sorting and thresholds.
• Subject Areas: Contains reports that cover various topics such as customer
analysis, enterprise performance management, human resources analysis,
inventory and supply chain analysis, sales and profitability analysis, and
supplier analysis.
Building reports using templates

A template provides the underlying structure of a report. It specifies the set of
information that the report should retrieve from your data source, and it also
determines the structure in which the information is displayed in the report’s
results. A template’s structure is the location of objects on the template, such as
showing that metrics have been placed in the report’s columns, and attributes
have been placed in the rows; the Revenue metric has been placed to the left of
the Revenue Forecast metric so that a user reading left to right can see current
revenue before seeing forecasted revenue; and so on.
The templates let you create a new report quickly because the template already
contains common objects and basic filters. When you create any new report, you
can start with an existing template, which will shorten the time it takes to
produce the finished report. You just select which objects to display on the report,
and in what order. You can then customize the report, by adding subtotals,
filtering the data, and formatting the report.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Building reports using templates 37

In the MicroStrategy Tutorial project, you will find several report templates to
choose from.
Report Templates
To view this list of report templates, from the MicroStrategy Tutorial Home page,
click Create Report.
38 Building reports using templates © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Exercise 2.1: Create a report using the Employee

Analysis template
We will create a employee report, based on the Employee Analysis template. This
template provides access to the objects that are relevant to analyzing employee
data. We will add the objects to create the report, and then customize it to suit our
needs, by displaying regional subtotals, for example.
The final report should look like the following. (Only two regions of the report are
provided in this sample.)
Employee Revenue by Region Report
Create a report using the Employee Analysis template
1 In the Tutorial project, on the MicroStrategy home page, click Create Report.
2 On the Create Report page, select the View Report in Design Mode check
box.
Use Design Mode to add, edit, or remove objects from the report template.
3 Click Employee Analysis.

An empty report template is displayed, with drop zones showing you where
to drag and drop objects. Notice that the Report Objects pane is displayed,
listing only those objects containing employee information.
Select the attributes for the report
4 In the Report Objects pane on the left, double-click Region to add it to the
rows of the report.
• Region is an attribute, as indicated by the icon.
• Attributes are automatically added to the rows of a report, although you can
drag and drop them onto the columns.
5 Double-click Manager and then Employee to add them.
Select the metrics for the report
6 In the Report Objects pane on the left, double-click Revenue to add it to the
columns of the report.
• Revenue is a metric, as indicated by the icon.
• Metrics are automatically added to the columns of a report, although you can
drag and drop them onto the rows.
7 Double-click Profit and then Units Sold to add them.

8 You decide that Profit is not really relevant to your employee analysis, so you
want to remove it. Drag the Profit metric from the report template to the
Report Objects pane.
The report template now looks like the following:
Save the report
10 In the Name box, type Employee Revenue by Region, then click OK.
Review the results
Check your results against the report sample at the beginning of the exercise. The
two reports are not quite the same. A sample of the current results is displayed
below:

The original report:
• Displays the name of each region and each manager only once
• Displays the manager’s last name, but not the first name
• Displays the Employee ID
• Does not display the word “Metrics”
• Displays regional subtotals
Display repeated row headers once
You can merge any row headers that are repeated. All headers displaying the
same value are automatically merged into one header. In this report, the regions
and managers are repeated, but we want to see each region and each manager
displayed once.
You can also merge repeated column headers. For example, if multiple metrics are
related to revenue, you can merge their column headers into a single header. In
our report, the Revenue and Units Sold metrics are different, so merging column
headers would not be helpful.
1 From the Tools menu, select Report Options.
2 On the General tab of the Report Options window, select the Merge check
box under Rows.
3 Click OK.
Add and remove attribute forms (manager first name and employee ID)
The manager first name and last name are forms of the Manager attribute.
Similarly, the ID is a form of the Employee attribute. Recall that attribute forms
provide additional descriptions for a business attribute.

Remove Manager First Name
1 Right-click Manager in the report and point to Attribute Forms. The attribute
forms for the selected attribute are displayed. Selected forms are displayed on
the report.
2 Click First Name to remove it from the report.
Add Employee ID
3 Add the ID attribute form for employees.

Right-click Employee, point to Attribute Forms, and select ID.
Save the report
5 In the Name box, type Regional Employee Report, then click OK.
Remove the extra Metrics column
1 From the Tools menu, select Report Options.

2 On the General tab of the Report Options window, select the Remove extra
column check box, in the View area.
3 Click OK.
Display regional subtotals
1 From the Data menu, select Show Totals. Subtotals are automatically
displayed for each level, which is region and manager for this report. However,
we only want to see regional subtotals.
2 From the Data menu, select Edit Totals.
3 In the Subtotals Editor, click the Advanced tab. Notice that subtotals are
calculated by position, and subtotals are applied to all rows and columns. This
means that subtotals are applied based on the metric’s location on the report.
If you change the layout of the report, which subtotals are calculated will also
change.
4 Select Across Level, to calculate subtotals for selected attributes rather than
location. This option means “group by attributes to the left of the selected
attribute.”
5 Select both Region and Manager.
Although you want regional subtotals, if you select Region only, no subtotals
are displayed. (You can try it.) Why? Across-level subtotals are grouped by
attributes to the left of the selected attributes. Region is the leftmost attribute
on the report, so there are no attributes to the left of it, and therefore no
subtotals.

6 Click OK.
Review results and save the final report
The report should now look like the report sample provided at the beginning of
this exercise.
1 Save and close the report.
Building reports from scratch

A simple report generally has at least one attribute, one metric, and one filter.
While it is not necessary to have all these objects in the report, the data returned
is more meaningful if all these objects are present in the report.
For example, if you create a report with just one attribute, such as Customer, and
run the report, it returns a list of all the attribute elements for that attribute. In this
case, you see a list of names for every customer who has done business with your
company and is in your data source. Likewise, if you add just one metric to an
otherwise blank report, you see one amount—all revenue data for all time, for all
regions.
If you add a metric and an attribute to the same report, such as the Customer
attribute and the Revenue metric, the report data begins to become useful
because you can view what revenue each customer brought to your stores.
However, for most organizations, this is still a prohibitively large report.
If you add a report filter to the report, you can limit the data to a specific area of
interest. For example, you can define a specific geographic region by adding the
Region and Year attribute to the report. Then you can add a filter to see only your
most profitable Northeast region customers. The resulting report can display
those customers in your Northeast region who brought in the most revenue.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Building reports from scratch 45

Exercise 2.2: Create a simple report from scratch

Create a report from scratch, to display profit data for subcategories. Filter the
report to display only the regions in the East (Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, Southeast,
and South).
We will use the Blank Report as a starting point, and add the following objects to
the template: Region, Subcategory, Profit, and Profit Margin. Add the East Region
filter.
The result should look like the following. Although only Mid-Atlantic is shown,
note that the Report Details pane indicates the regions included in the filter and
therefore the report.
Profit for Subcategories in Eastern Regions
46 Building reports from scratch © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Create a report using the Blank Report template
1. In the Tutorial project, on the MicroStrategy home page, click the Create
Report icon .
2. On the Create Report page, select the View Report in Design Mode check
box.
3. Click Blank Report.
An empty report template is displayed, with drop zones showing you where
to drag and drop objects.
Select the attributes for the report
4. Add the Region attribute to the rows.
You can find Region in the Geography folder, under Attributes in the All Objects
pane. Drag it onto the rows of the template.

5. Add the Subcategory attribute to the right of Region.
To find the attribute, in the All Objects pane, click the Up One Level icon , and
then click Products.
Select the metrics for the report
6. Add the Profit and Profit Margin metrics to the columns.
At the top of the All Objects pane, select Metrics from the drop-down list. In the
Search For box, type Profit, then click the Search icon . Double-click Profit
and then Profit Margin to add them to the columns of the template. (Metrics are
automatically added to the columns.)
Add a filter to the report
7 In the Search For box, type East Region (which is the name of the filter)
and click the Search icon .
8 Drag East Region from the All Objects pane and drop it into the Report Filter
pane.
The report looks like the following:
Save the report
9 Click the Save icon . Name the report Profit for Subcategories
in Eastern Regions and save it in the My Reports folder,
48 Building reports from scratch © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Review the results
Check your results against the report sample at the beginning of the exercise.
Only the following regions should be displayed:
• Mid-Atlantic
• Northeast
• Southeast
• South
11 Close the report.

3
CREATING OBJECTS FOR
REPORTS
Filters, Prompts, Metrics, Attribute Groups
Overview
Now that you have created reports using existing objects, create your own
objects to add to reports:
• Filter: Specifies conditions that data must meet to be included in the report
results. For example, a report containing employee data can be filtered to
display only the Northeast region.
• Prompt: Asks the user, when a report is run, to provide an answer. Prompts are
often used in filters. For example, the employee data report can prompt you to
select which region to display.
• Metric: Performs calculations on data stored in your database. The results are
displayed on a report. For example, the revenue metric sums the revenue fact,
while an average revenue averages the revenue data.
• Derived metric: Metric created based on data already available in a report.

For example, the employee data report contains a revenue metric and a cost
metric. A derived metric can subtract cost from revenue, to calculate profit.
• Custom group: A group of filters that applies different filters to different rows
of a report. A custom group allows you to group and display attribute

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Creating Objects for Reports 3
elements in a way that is not defined in your data source. For example, a
custom group can group employees from North America, South America,
Europe, and Asia separately, even though the data source does not include an
attribute for continent.
• Derived element: Groups attribute elements on a report, based on a single

attribute. Like custom groups, derived elements allow you to group and
display attribute elements in a way that is not defined in your data source.
Unlike custom groups, they are created on the fly within a report. For example,
derived elements can group employees from different continents.
Building filters to filter data on reports

A filter screens data from your data source to determine whether the data should
be included in or excluded from the calculations of the report results. Filters are
helpful in reducing large quantities of data and only displaying pertinent subsets
of that data, so reports show you what you really need to see.
Filter Examples
If you are familiar with SQL syntax, it may help to know that a filter is equivalent to the
WHERE clause in a SQL statement.
Applying filters to reports allows you to reuse the same report with different filters
to achieve different results, tailored to a specific scenario or business question to
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Building filters to filter data on reports 51

3 Creating Objects for Reports Introduction to Analytics Reporting
be answered. For example, consider the following diagram, which shows a table
of data filtered by three different report filter conditions:
Filter Conditions
As you can see, each report filter condition returns a different result set. You need
to know how to design the correct report filter to retrieve the desired data.
You can create:
• Report filters: Are used in the SQL that is generated to retrieve the report
results from the data source. Report filters can use any object in the project,
whether or not it is part of the report.
• View filters: Are applied to the report results after the SQL is executed and the
results are returned from the data source. View filters do not modify what data
is retrieved from the data source. This can help improve report execution
performance. A view filter is created on the fly in a report, based only on those
objects that exist in the Report Objects pane.
The advantage of using both report filters and view filters on a report is that the
report can use the report filter to bring back more data than can usefully be
displayed at any one time. An analyst can then use a view filter to change which
data is displayed. A view filter does not trigger re-execution against the data
source. This capability translates to improved response time and decreased
database load.
Filters are most commonly used on reports, to filter all the data the report would
otherwise retrieve from the data source and display to users. However, filters can also
be used with a specific object on a report, such as on a metric. A filter placed on a
metric only filters data related to that metric. This type of metric is called a conditional
metric. The metric is filtered by the attached filter, no matter what report the metric is
placed on. Conditional metrics are taught in the Advanced Analytics class;
information is available in the Advanced Reporting Guide.
52 Building filters to filter data on reports © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Viewing filter details: Report Details pane

To successfully interpret the data displayed in a report, it is important that you
understand what data was specifically included in that report, as well as what
data was excluded. For example, the following image shows a report that is
filtered based on specific categories. While the Category attribute is included in
the report filter, it is not included in the report template—the attribute is not
displayed on the grid, and it is not available in the Report Objects pane.
Report Filter Based on Categories
The Report Details pane displays the definition of a report, that is, all the objects
being used for a report, including any filters and the details of those filters. You
can open and close the Report Details pane by selecting Report Details from the
Tools menu.
The following image shows the previous report with its report filter, and now with
a view filter added. The view filter has a condition of Region=Mid-Atlantic,
Northeast, and Southeast. As you can see, the Region attribute is in the Report
Objects pane (and on the report template), and only data for the selected regions
displays in the report view, even though data for the other regions was retrieved
from the data source.
View Filter Based on Region

View filters
Once a report is displayed, you can narrow its results by creating a view filter and
applying it to the report. The view filter restricts data based only on the report
results already displayed on the screen.
View filters are created within a report, based only on the objects in the Report
Objects pane. A view filter dynamically limits the data being displayed on a report
without re-executing the report against the data source. This feature allows
analysts to create multiple reports out of a larger parent report, without stressing
the system or your data source. This can help improve report execution
performance. It also allows different users to access the same report cache but see
different data according to their needs.
The View Filter pane allows you to create conditions for the view filter. A condition
defines what the data must meet to be included on the report. The View Filter
pane also displays the view filter conditions that are applied to your report.
View Filter Pane
Notice that the Auto-Apply Changes check box is selected. This means that as
soon as you create a view filter condition, the report is updated. If you add
another condition or delete one, the data is updated again.
You can instead control when the update occurs. Applying a number of filter
changes all at once can be helpful when your report contains large amounts of
data, so that you update the data once, after all the changes are made. Updating
the data repeatedly takes longer than updating it once.
If you are familiar with SQL, it may help to know that view filters do not modify the
SQL for the report like report filters do. Instead, view filters are applied to the overall
result set after the SQL is executed and results are returned from the data source.

Exercise 3.1: Create a view filter

We will create a view filter to restrict an existing report to the Music and Movies
categories, with profit values less than $3000. This exercise uses both an attribute
filter (on Category) and a metric filter (on Profit).
Open the report
2 Click Subject Areas, then Sales and Profitability Analysis, and click the
report named Revenue and Profit Trends by Region, Category, and
Quarter to run it.
3 Drag Region from the Page-by pane to the left of Category on the report grid.
Removing the page-by is not a requirement for creating a view filter. In this
example, it provides another attribute on the report grid, and allows us to focus on
how view filters affect the report results.
4 The resulting report looks like the following. Notice that the report filter and
page-by are both blank now. The report contains 338 rows. Take note of the
profit value for Central, Movies, 2013 Q4, which is $2,370. This will help us

monitor if and how metric values change when we create and apply the view
filter.
Create a view filter
1 From the Tools menu, select View Filter, to open the View Filter pane.
2 In the View Filter pane, click Add Condition.
Data must meet the defined condition to be included on the report.

3 From the Filter On drop-down list, select Category.
The Filter On list contains only the objects on the report.
4 By default, a view filter on an attribute allows you to create a list of the

attribute elements to include in the report. You can instead use the list to
exclude elements (by selecting Not in List). For this example, keep the
operator as In List, and add Movies and Music to the list.
• The elements of an attribute are the unique values for that attribute. In this
case, the attribute is Category, and its elements are Books, Electronics, Movies,
and Music.
• Instead of creating a list, you can create a qualification, which compares the
attribute to a specific value. You will create a qualification using a metric later
in this exercise.
5 Click Apply. The view filter is applied to the report data, and only data for the
Movies and Music categories is included on the report. The View Filter pane
now displays the condition that you created.
The number of rows has decreased from 338 to 178, but the data values have
not changed.

• The number of rows has decreased because only half the categories are
now included on the report.
• The calculations are not affected by the view filter; the view filter affects
what data is displayed. For example, the profit value for Central, Movies,
2013 Q4 is $2,370, the same as in the unfiltered report.
The condition was immediately applied to the report because Auto-Apply

Changes is selected. If the check box was cleared, another Apply button displays
after you complete a condition. When you have added all the conditions, click
Apply to apply all the conditions at once.
Add another condition to the view filter
6 You want to further focus your analysis, to identify categories with a low profit.
Click Add Condition in the View Filter pane.
7 From the Filter On drop-down list, select Profit.
8 Select Less Than from the list of operators.
9 Type 3000 in the value box.

10 Click Apply. The view filter is applied to the report data, and only data for the
Movies and Music categories that have profit values below $3000 is included
on the report. The View Filter pane now displays both conditions that you
created.
The number of rows has decreased from 178 to 132, but the data values have
not changed.
• The number of rows decreases because the quarters that have more than
$3000 profit are no longer displayed on the report. For example, the row
for Central, Movies, 2013 Q1 is no longer displayed (its profit was $4,083).
• Since the view filter affects what data is displayed, the calculations are not
affected by the view filter. The profit value for Central, Movies, 2013 Q4 is
$2,370, the same as in the previous reports.
Save the report
1 Save the report in the My Reports folder as View Filter, and close the report.
Report filters
You can create a report filter:
• When you create the report, dynamically. The difference between this type of
report filter and a view filter is that you can use any object in your data source,
whereas a view filter uses only those objects on the report. When you create a

report filter this way, it is saved within the report and cannot be used on other
reports.
• As a stand-alone object. The object can be used on multiple reports, as well as

other objects, such as metrics. This saves time—you can create one filter and
use it in multiple objects, instead of creating a filter on each object.
In Design Mode, a dynamic report filter displays the filter definition, while a
stand-alone filter displays its name. In the example below, the stand-alone filter is
named Movies & Music, while the dynamic report filter uses the Subcategory
attribute in its definition.
Filter types
A filter is composed of at least one qualification. A qualification defines the
condition that the data must meet to be included in a report, for example,
“Region = Northeast” or “Revenue > $1 million”.
You can create the following types of filter qualifications:
Filter Type Description Example
Attribute Qualification: Restricts data based on attributes
Attribute element list Filter based on attribute Region In List North, South, and
qualification elements, such as North, South, West
and West for Region attribute
Attribute form Filter based on attribute forms, • Customer Description Begins

qualification such as the ID or description With SMITH
(which is the name) of the
Customer attribute • Customer ID = 001 - 100
• Ship Date between 1/1/2016

and 6/30/2016

Filter Type Description Example
Set Qualification: Create a subset of attributes, generated dynamically based on the metrics
associated with those attributes or the relationships between those attributes.
Metric qualification Filter based on a metric’s value, • Revenue > 300,000

rank, or percent
• Rank of Profit = 1
Relationship Filter based on relationships Stores selling Nike shoes in the

qualification between two attributes Northeast (relationship between
the Item and Region attributes)
Shortcut qualifications: Restrict data related to an existing report or filter.
Shortcut-to-a-report Filter based on the results from The intersection of the 1/1/2015
qualification an existing report, with Active Customers report and 12/
additional qualifications, if 31/2015 Active Customers report
needed to display continuing customers
Shortcut-to-a-filter Filter based on an existing filter, Add a qualification to determine

qualification with additional qualifications, if active customers to the Region In
needed List North, South, and West filter
described above
You can also create advanced qualifications such as attribute-to-attribute

qualifications and prompted filters. For more information on all types of advanced
filters, refer to the Advanced Filters chapter of the MicroStrategy Advanced Reporting
Guide. This course will discuss most of the filter types listed above; relationship
qualifications are presented in the Advanced Analytics class.
Joining filter qualifications with logical operators

If you add multiple qualifications to a filter, the qualifications are joined by logical
operators, which determine how the qualifications interact with each other.
• AND operator: The object must meet both qualifications to be included in the
report. This is the default operator.
In the following Venn diagram, the AND operator is represented by the

intersection of the circles—revenue values generated in the Northeast region

in 2012. Revenue values calculated for 2012 in the Southeast region are not
included, and no 2013 values are included in the report results.
AND operator
• OR operator: The object must meet either qualification to be included in the

report.
In the following Venn diagram, the OR operator is represented by the area in
yellow—revenue values generated in 2012, the Northeast, or in both 2012
and Northeast. Revenue values for 2011 in the Southeast region are not
included, for example.
OR Operator
• OR NOT operator: The object must not meet the second qualification (the
qualification following the operator) to be included in the report.
In the following Venn diagram, the OR NOT operator is represented by the
yellow area—all revenue values are included in the results, except for those

generated in the Northeast for any year except 2012. Revenue values for 2011
in the Southeast region are included, for example.
OR NOT Operator
• AND NOT operator: The object must meet the first qualification (the
qualification before the operator) and not meet the second qualification to be
included in the report.
In the following Venn diagram, the AND NOT operator is represented by the
yellow crescent—all 2012 revenue values, except for those generated in the
Northeast, are included. Revenue values for 2011 in the Southeast region are
not included, while those for 2012 in the Southeast are.
AND NOT Operator

Exercise 3.2: Create a report filter in a report

We will create a report filter in the report that we applied a view filter to. The filter
uses the Subcategory attribute, which is not included on the report. Only data
from the Action, Comedy, Alternative, and Country subcategories will be included
in the report’s data.
Open the report
1 Edit the View Filter report that you created in the previous exercise. To edit a
report, hover your cursor over the report name and click Edit. The report
opens in Design Mode.
Design Mode allows you to create report filters.
Create a report filter in the report
1 If the Report Filter pane is not displayed, click the Filter icon in the toolbar.
2 Click All Objects in the accordion pane on the left, to choose objects that are
not in the report.
3 In the All Objects pane, click Attributes, then Products.
4 Drag Subcategory from the All Objects pane to the Report Filter pane.
5 Select Qualify, to create an attribute form qualification, which compares a

selected attribute form to a specific value.

Instead of creating an attribute form qualification, you can select a list of attribute
elements to include in or exclude from the report.
6 The first drop-down list contains the attribute forms of the selected attribute.
Select DESC, to filter on the attribute’s description.
The forms are additional descriptive information about an attribute. In this case,
the Subcategory attribute’s forms are ID and DESC.
7 The next drop-down list contains operators. Select Equals.
8 In the box, type Action, the value to compare the Subcategory description
to.
9 Click Apply.
Run the report to see the results
10 Click the Run Report icon in the toolbar. The view filter and report filter
conditions are both displayed in the Report Details pane.
Before you applied the report filter, the report had 132 rows, and the profit
value for Central, Movies, 2013 Q4 was $2,370. After you applied the report
filter:
• The number of rows has decreased to 98, because the Action subcategory
is available only for the Movies category. The rows for Music are no longer
displayed on the report.

• The profit value for Central, Movies, 2013 Q4 is now $346, because it
contains profits only from Action movies, not Comedy, Drama, and so on.
A report filter can affect the calculations, while a view filter does not.
Save the report
11 Save the report as View Filter + Report Filter, in the My Reports folder. Change
the Description as well as the report Name. Because the report filter uses an
object that is not included in the report, it is important to document how the
report’s calculations are affected, for other users. If the Report Details pane is
not displayed, another user may not realize that only Action movies are
included, not all the movie subcategories.

Exercise 3.3: Create stand-alone filters

In this exercise, we will create a:
• Filter for revenue values over $5,000,000 (a metric qualification)
• Filter for specific items (an attribute list qualification)
• Filter using a shortcut to a report
• Report with the Region attribute and Revenue metric, filtered by the revenue
filter
Finally, we will replace the revenue filter in the report with the item and
shortcut-to-a-report filters.
Create a metric qualification filter on revenue
1 From a page in MicroStrategy Web, select Create, then select New Filter.

2 On the New Filter page, in the pane on the left, click Metrics.
3 Click the Sales Metrics folder.
4 Drag the Revenue metric to the filter definition pane on the right.
5 In the first drop-down list, select Greater than.
6 In the second text box, type 5000000 (without commas).
7 Click Apply to save the metric qualification.
8 Save the filter in the My Reports folder as Revenue > $5,000,000.
9 Close the filter.
Create an attribute element list filter on item
1 From a page in MicroStrategy Web, click Create, and select New Filter.
2 On the New Filter page, in the pane on the left, click Hierarchies, and then
click the Products hierarchy.

3 Click the Subcategory attribute to view its elements.
4 Click Business to view its child attributes (any attributes below it in the
hierarchy).
5 Click the Item attribute to view its elements.
6 Select Jump Start Your Brain and The Joy of Work, then drag them both to
the filter definition pane on the right. You have started creating an attribute
element list qualification.
7 In the pane on the left, click the Up One Level icon twice to return to the
list of attribute elements for the Subcategory attribute.
8 Click Sports & Health, then Item.
9 Select Nutrition 101 and Pilates: The Way Forward and drag them to the
filter definition pane. The items are added to the list.
10 Click the Up One Level icon twice to return to the list of subcategories.
11 Click Science & Technology, then Item.
12 Select Nanotechnology and Being Digital, and drag them to the filter
definition pane. You should now have six items listed in your qualification in
the filter definition pane.
13 Save the filter in the My Reports folder as List of Items.
14 Close the filter.
Create a shortcut-to-a-report filter
1 From a page in MicroStrategy Web, click Create, and select New Filter.

2 On the New Filter page, in the pane on the left, type Revenue, Costs,
and Units Sold in the Search box, then click the Search icon .
3 Drag the Revenue, Costs, and Units Sold by Call Center report from the list
of found objects to the filter definition pane.
4 Save the filter in the My Reports folder as Shortcut to Call Center Report.
5 Close the filter.
Create and run a report using the metric qualification filter
1 From a page in MicroStrategy Web, select Create, select New Report, then
select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane on the left, click Attributes, and then click the
Geography folder.
3 Drag the Region attribute to the rows of the template definition pane.
4 In the All Objects pane, select Metrics from the drop-down list.
6 Drag the Revenue metric to the metrics drop zone of the template definition
pane.
Add the filter to the report
7 In the All Objects pane, select My Personal Objects from the drop-down list.
8 Click the My Reports folder.
9 Drag the Revenue > $5,000,000 filter to the Report Filter definition pane.
If the Report Filter pane is not displayed, click the Filter icon on the
toolbar.

10 In the toolbar, click the Run Report icon . The report should look like the
following:
Q: What is the revenue amount for Central?
11 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Report Filter: Metric.
12 Select Return to original report. The report is displayed in Design Mode.
Combine two filters in a report
1 In the Report Filter definition pane, delete the Revenue > $5,000,000 filter by
clicking the X next to its name.
2 In the All Objects pane, click My Personal Objects.
3 Click the My Reports folder.
4 Drag both the List of Items and Shortcut to Call Center Report filters to the
Report Filter definition pane. Notice that the two filters are joined by the AND
operator, by default. Objects have to meet both filters to be included in the
report.

5 In the toolbar, click Run Report. Compare your results to the expected report
results shown below:
Q: What is the revenue amount for Central? Why is that value different from the
revenue amount in the previous report?
A: This report calculates revenue only for the items in the filter’s list. The previous
report calculated revenue for all items.
Q: Why are there seven rows on this report, but only three in the previous report?
A: This report returns all the regions in the Revenue, Costs, and Units Sold by Call
Center report (only the Web region is not included in that report). The previous
report returned only the regions with revenue over $5 million.
6 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Report Filter: Metric and Shortcut.
Change the operator between the filters
7 In the toolbar, click the Design icon .

8 In the Report Filter definition pane, click the AND operator between the two
filters, and select OR. Now, objects have to meet only one of the filters to be
included in the report.
9 In the toolbar, click Run Report. Compare your results to the expected report
results shown below:
Q: Why are there eight rows on this report, but only seven in the previous report?
A: The report contains all eight regions in the project, because Web is now
displayed. The Web region had sales of the selected items, so it is included in the
report even though it is not included in the report shortcut. A region has to satisfy
only one of the filters to be included in this report.
10 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Report Filter: Metric or Shortcut.
11 Close the report.

Building prompts to allow user input

A prompt is a question the system presents to a user during report execution.
How the user answers the question determines what data is displayed on the
report.
For example, when a user runs a report, he is prompted to select a book supplier
from a list.
Book Supplier Prompt
The report displays revenue only for the selected supplier.

Prompted Report Results
The next time that the user runs the report, he can answer the prompt with a
different supplier, or the same one.
Prompts allow the report designer to create fewer reports, because each analyst
can answer the report’s prompts to identify specific data they want to see in the
final report. Effectively, each user creates his own filter for the report.
The difference, from a report designer’s perspective, is that a filter is created to

provide a single, specific definition for the report. The filtered report then displays
the same set of data to every user who executes that report. In contrast, a prompt
dynamically modifies the contents of a report. With prompts, users can determine
the objects (attributes, attribute elements, metrics, and so on) that they want to
be part of, or excluded from, the report query that is sent to the data source.
Therefore, a prompt can be seen as a way for users to create their own filter for a
given report.
74 Building prompts to allow user input © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

The designer presents the question to analysts who execute the report, by placing
a prompt object on the report. A prompt can be placed in the:
• Report filter, to let analysts determine the data that is included in the report.
For example, the following prompt allows the user to select which supplier to
display.
Prompt in Report Filter
• Report template, to let analysts select which objects to include on the report.
These objects can include attributes, metrics, or filters.
Prompt in Report Template
• Page-by, to let analysts select which objects to use to split a long report into a
set of individual pages.
Prompt in Page-by
Prompts can also be used in a filter, metric, or custom group.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Building prompts to allow user input 75

Prompt types
The correct prompt type to create depends on what report objects you want
users to be able to filter on:
• Attribute Element List prompts: Are based on attribute elements. Users

select prompt answers from a limited list of specific attribute elements.
Attribute Element List Prompt
This prompt is the most restrictive of the attribute and hierarchy prompts
because the user has the fewest number of attribute elements from a single
attribute to select answers from.
• Attribute Qualification prompts: Are based on an attribute form. Depending

on how you create the prompt, users either:

Select from a list of all the attribute elements from specific attributes.
Attribute Qualification Prompt (Selection)


Are guided through creating a qualification to filter on an attribute form.
Attribute Qualification Prompt (Qualification)
This prompt is less restrictive than the attribute element list prompt, because
the user can select from multiple attributes. It is more restrictive than the
hierarchy prompt, because the user has fewer attributes to select answers
from.
• Hierarchy Qualification prompts: Are based on attribute elements from one

or more attributes in a hierarchy. Users select attribute elements from a list of
attributes.
Hierarchy Qualification Prompt
This prompt lets you give users the largest number of attribute elements to
choose from when they answer the prompt to define their filtering criteria.
Users can select multiple attributes from multiple hierarchies.
A hierarchy is a group of attributes that are conceptually related; for example, the
Time hierarchy might consist of a Year attribute, a Month attribute, and a Day
attribute.

• Metric Qualification prompts: Are based on metrics. Users are guided

through creating a metric qualification, which determines what data should
be displayed for one or more specific metrics on the report.
Metric Qualification Prompt
• Value prompts: Are based on a value for any object. Users type a single value
to filter the report data on. The value can be a date, text, or a number,
including Big Decimal numbers.
Value Prompt (Numeric)
A value prompt is usually used in a filter, but a value prompt can also be used
in a metric. The filter or metric is then placed on a report.
• Object prompts: Are based on any object. Users select objects to include in a
report, such as attributes, metrics, or filters. Users can use this prompt to add

more data to a report, or choose from a selection of filters to apply a filter that
is most useful for their analysis purposes.
Object Prompts
• Level prompts: Are based on an attribute. Users select the attribute that the
metric is calculated at (the metric’s level). Level refers to the level within a
hierarchy of attributes.
Metric levels will be discussed later in this course, in Level of calculation for a
metric, page 96.
The correct prompt type to create also depends on where on and how you want
to add the prompt:
• To add a prompt to a report:

 On the report template, use:
– Object prompt containing attributes or metrics

 On the report filter, use:
– Attribute Element List prompt
– Attribute Qualification prompt
– Hierarchy Qualification prompt
– Metric Qualification prompt

– Object prompt containing filters or reports


On the report’s page-by pane:
– Object prompt containing attributes or metrics
• To add a prompt to a metric, use:

 Level prompt
 Object prompt containing attributes, filters, or metrics
 Value prompt containing numbers
• To add a prompt to a filter, use:

 Attribute Element List prompt
 Attribute Qualification prompt
 Hierarchy Qualification prompt
 Metric Qualification prompt
 Object prompt containing attributes, filters, or reports
 Value prompt containing dates, numbers, or text
Prompt creation
After selecting the type of prompt, the next step in creating a prompt is defining
the characteristics for your prompt. These characteristics are grouped onto tabs in
MicroStrategy Web’s prompt creation page:
• Definition: Set limits on the amount of content that can be selected in the
prompt.
Allows you to select the object(s) to base the prompt on. For attribute element
list prompts, you can also select the attribute elements to display.
• General: Provide a title and prompt instructions, which are displayed when
the report is run. Determine whether a prompt is required. Define the
minimum/maximum limits. Determine whether personal answers are allowed.
Personal answers allow a user to save prompt answers for the prompt, and
then reuse the answers on any report that uses the prompt. Personal answers
can help reduce the storage space used by multiple saved static reports.
• Style: Define how the prompt will be displayed (style, size, and so on). If you
selected a search object in the Definition tab, select whether to allow users

use a search box to locate prompt answers. Searching for objects allows users
to quickly locate specific objects to use to answer the prompt.
• Qualification: Choose whether to allow users to select prompt answers,

create a qualification, or select which to use. Define the expression that
qualifies the prompt answer.
Available for Attribute Qualification, Hierarchy Qualification, and Metric

Qualification prompts.
Exercise 3.4: Create prompts to use in a filter

We will create prompts and use them in the filter of a report.
1 Create the following prompts:
• Prompt on the Product hierarchy: Users see all the attributes and attribute
elements in the Product hierarchy.
• Prompt on the Region attribute element list: Users see the entire list of
attribute elements (regions). Answering the prompt is required.
• Metric Qualification prompt on Revenue: Users are guided through
creating a metric qualification (filter) on the Revenue metric.
2 Create a report with Item and Revenue, and add the prompts to its report
filter.
3 Run the report, and select the following answers to the prompts:
• Books category
• Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Southeast regions
• Revenue value greater than $20,000
The report results should look like the following:

Create a prompt on the Product hierarchy
1 On the MicroStrategy Web home page, click the Create Prompt icon .
2 On the Create Prompt page, select Hierarchy Qualification Prompt.
We use a Hierarchy Qualification prompt because we want the user to select an

attribute element from a specific hierarchy.
3 On the Definition tab, select Choose a Hierarchy.
4 Click Select Hierarchy.
5 From the Available list, select Products, and click OK.
6 On the General tab, type Choose from all attributes in the

Products hierarchy in the Title box.
7 Save the prompt as Choose from all attributes in the Products hierarchy in the
My Objects folder.
8 Close the prompt. The Create Prompt page is displayed.
Create an Attribute Element List prompt on the Region attribute
1 On the Create Prompt page, select Attribute Element List.

We use an Attribute Element List prompt because we want the user to select an
attribute element from a restricted list of attribute element.
2 On the Definition tab, click Select Attribute.
3 Click the Geography folder, select Region in the Available list, and click OK.
4 On the General Tab, type Choose from all elements of Region in

the Title box.

5 Select the Prompt Answer Is Required check box.
6 Save the prompt as Choose from all elements of Quarter in the My Objects
folder.
7 Close the prompt. The Create Prompt page is displayed.
Create a Metric Qualification prompt on Revenue
1 On the Create Prompt page, select Metric Qualification Prompt.
We use a Metric Qualification prompt because we want the user to decide how to
filter on the metric.
2 On the Definition tab, click Choose a metric.
3 Click Select Metric.
4 Click the Sales Metrics folder, select Revenue in the Available list, and click
OK.
5 On the General tab, type Qualify on Revenue metric in the Title box.
6 Save the prompt as Choose on metric object Revenue in the My Objects

folder.
7 In the drop-down list, select the My Objects folder and save the prompt as
Qualify on Revenue metric.
8 From the Create Prompt page, click the MicroStrategy icon to return to
the home page.

Create a report that uses the prompts
1 Select Create, point to New Report, then select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane, click My Personal Objects, then click the My Objects
folder.
3 Drag the following three prompts into the Report Filter definition pane:
• Choose from all attributes in the Products hierarchy
• Choose from all elements of Region
• Qualify on Revenue metric
4 In the All Objects pane, select Attributes from the drop-down list.
5 Click the Products folder.
6 Drag the Item attribute into the rows of the template definition pane.
7 In the All Objects pane, select Metrics from the drop-down list.
9 Drag the Revenue metric into the columns of the template definition pane.
Run the report with prompted filters
1 On the toolbar, click Run Report.

2 Answer Books for the Products hierarchy prompt:
a In the Available list, expand the Category attribute. Double-click Books to

add it to the Selected list.
3 Answer Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and South for the Region prompt. Notice that
an answer is required.
a In the Available list, hold the SHIFT key while selecting Mid-Atlantic,
Northeast, and South, then click the > button to add them to the
Selected list.

4 Create the “Revenue greater than 20,000” metric qualification for the Revenue
prompt:
a In the Available list, double-click Revenue to add it to the Selected list.
b In the Selected list, click the operator to change it to Greater Than.
c Click Value, type 20000 in the Enter Value box, then click OK.
d Leave the level at Default.
5 At the bottom of the prompts window, click Run Report.
6 Compare your results to the expected results at the beginning of this exercise.
Save the report as a prompted report
1 On the toolbar, click Save.

2 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Filter Definition Prompts.
3 Select the Keep Report Prompted check box.
If you do not keep the report prompted, your prompt answers are saved, to create
a static report. The next time that the report is run, the prompt selection page is
not displayed because the saved answers are used to automatically answer the
prompts.
4 Expand Advanced Options.
5 Click Only filter will be prompted.
These options allow you to determine which prompts are presented to users when
the report is run. You can choose to display prompts that are part of the report’s
filter (as these are), prompts that have been placed on the report’s template, or
both.
6 Clear the Set the current prompt answers to be the default prompt
answers.
If you select the default prompt answer option, the next time that the report is run,
the prompt selection page is displayed, with your prompt answers as the default.
The user can change the prompt answers.
7 Click OK.

Exercise 3.5: Create object prompts to select the objects

displayed on a report
We will create object prompts, which allow users to select the objects to display
on a report, as described below:
• The metric prompt allows you to choose the Average Revenue metric, the
Units Sold metric, or both.
• The attribute prompt allows you to select any attributes returned by the
“Search for all objects of type Attribute” search.
This search object is already built for you and can be found in the Public
Object\Searches folder. A search object searches for and displays specific
objects when the user executes the report. This allows the prompt to display
the most up-to-date objects in the project.
Create the report and place both object prompts on the report template. When
you run the report, select Units Sold, Category, and Region for the prompt
answers, so the report results look like the following:
Note: This is only a sample of the report results, not the full report.
Save the report as a prompted report, and use the prompt answers as the default
answers. When you run the report again, you are prompted to provide answers,
but are provided with these default answers.
Save the report as a static report. When you run the report again, you are not
prompted, and the last prompt answers are used to define the report.

Create a prompt to select metrics
1 On the MicroStrategy Web home page, click Create, point to New Prompt,
and select Object Prompt.
We use an Object prompt because we want the user to select the metrics to display
on the report.
2 On the Definition tab, select Use a Pre-defined List of Objects, and then click
Add.
3 From the Look In drop-down list, select the Metrics folder.
4 In the Available list, click the Sales Metrics folder.
5 Add Average Revenue and Units Sold to the Selected list. You may need to
click the arrows to scroll through all the Sales Metrics to find both of these
metrics.
6 Click OK.
7 On the General tab, type Choose from a list of metrics in the Title
box.
8 Save the prompt in the My Objects folder as Choose from a list of metrics.
9 Close the prompt.
Create a prompt to select attributes
1 On the MicroStrategy Web home page, click Create, point to New Prompt,
and select Object Prompt.
We use an Object prompt because we want the user to select the attributes to
display on the report.
2 On the Definition tab, select Use the Result of a Search Object, then click
Select Search.
3 Select Search for all objects of type Attribute, and click OK.

4 On the General tab, type Choose from a list of attributes in the

Title box.
5 Save the prompt in the My Objects folder as Choose from a list of attributes.
6 Close the prompt.
Create a report using the object prompts
1 On the MicroStrategy Web home page, select Create, point to New Report,
then select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane, click My Personal Objects, then click the My Objects
folder.
3 Drag the Choose from a list of metrics prompt into the columns of the
template definition pane.
4 Drag the Choose from a list of attributes prompt into the rows of the
By default, the order in which you add prompts to a report determines the display
sequence of the prompts when the user runs the report. However, you can change
this order by selecting Prompt Ordering from the Data menu. In the Prompt
Ordering window, use the arrow keys to re-order the prompt objects in the report.
The Prompt Ordering option under the Data menu is only available when a report
has more than one prompt object.
Save the report
5 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Prompts-Original.
Run the report, answering the prompts
6 Select Run newly saved report.
7 For the metrics prompt, in the Available list, select Units Sold, and click > to
move it to the Selected list.

8 For the attributes prompt, move Category and Region to the Selected list.
You can search for Region by typing Region in the Search for box and
clicking the Search icon .
9 To display Category to the right of Region on the report template, move

Category below Region. In the Selected list, select Category, and click the
Move Down button.
10 Click Run Report.
11 Compare your results to the expected report at the beginning of this exercise.
Save and run the report with a prompted template
1 From the Report Home menu, select Save As.
2 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Prompts-Template Prompted.
3 Expand Advanced Options.
4 In the Prompts area, select Only template will be prompted.

5 Leave the Set the Current Prompt Answers to be the Default Prompt
Answers check box selected.
When this check box is selected, prompt answers selected when the report is run
become the new default prompt answers. When the report runs again, these
answers display as default prompt answers, although the user can change them.
6 Click OK, then select Run newly saved report. Notice that the prompt
answers you selected the last time are displayed as the default answers.
7 Click Run Report. Because you used the same prompt answers, the report is
identical to the first time that you ran it.
Save and run the report as a static, non-prompted report
1 From the Report Home menu, select Save As.

2 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Prompts-Static.
3 In the Prompts area, select Save Report as Static.
4 Click OK, then select Run newly saved report.
You are no longer prompted since you saved the report as a static report. Since the
report runs with your previously saved prompt answers, it is identical to the
previous reports.
Building metrics to calculate data

Metrics are calculations that are placed directly in reports, to calculate the values
in the data fetched from your data source.
For example, your data source contains a Cost fact, which represents the cost per
product item. You want to view the cost for each item on a report. To calculate the
cost, create a metric that add ups (or sums) the cost. The metric definition is
shown below in the Metric Editor, the interface that you use to create metrics.
Sum of Cost Metric
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Building metrics to calculate data 93

Notice that Sum is selected in the list of functions on the left, and the function is
applied to the Cost fact.
Place the metric on a report with the Item attribute. When you run the report, the
cost is calculated for each item. A portion of the report is shown below.
Sum of Cost for Items
The metric values are not shown as currency, because we did not format the metric or
the report.
The Sum of Cost metric uses a fact, but metrics can be built using attributes or
other metrics as well. For example, the Employee Headcount metric applies the
Count function to the Employee attribute.
Employee Headcount Metric
94 Building metrics to calculate data © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Place the metric on a report with the Region and Call Center attributes. When you
run the report, the Employee Headcount is calculated for each Call Center, as
shown below:
Employee Headcount
If you are familiar with data warehousing concepts, facts reflect data values from your
data source that represent business performance. Facts are MicroStrategy objects
which do not appear on a report.
• Facts are typically numerical.
• Facts are mapped to columns in your schema. The fact object serves as a bridge
between fact values stored in your data source and the metrics that users want to
see on reports.
• Facts are used to define metrics.
• Metrics perform aggregations on fact columns.
Fact objects provide the following benefits:
• Report designers and end users do not need to understand the structure of the
data source when they build reports.
• The data source can contain columns with different names that store the same
type of fact data; they are all resolved with a single-named fact object in
MicroStrategy.

• You do not have to resolve discrepancies in the data source to make reporting
seamless for users.
Level of calculation for a metric

A metric’s level (sometimes called dimensionality) determines the attribute level
that the metric is calculated at. Therefore, every metric must have a level as part of
its definition.
Level refers to the location of the attribute in the hierarchy of related attributes to
which the attribute belongs. For example, in the Time hierarchy, Year is the
highest level, while Day is the lowest.
Year Hierarchy
By default, a metric is calculated at the report level, which means it is calculated at

the level of the attribute on the report in which the metric is placed. In the Sum of
Cost for Items example above, the metric is calculated at the level of the report,
which is Item.
When more than one attribute is on a report, as is generally the case, a metric is
calculated by default at the level of the lowest-level attribute that is on the report.
The lowest level is usually the attribute that reflects the least-inclusive business
concept.
The Employee Headcount report shows employee headcount listed by region and
call center. Will the Employee Headcount metric be summed up and displayed by

region? Or will it be summed up and displayed by call center? The metric results
by default are calculated to reflect call center data, since the Call Center attribute
is a less-inclusive, or lower-level concept than Region. Even if you swap the
location of the Call Center and Region attributes, the Employee Headcount metric
is calculated at the level of Call Center, as shown below. Compare the numbers for
each call center with the numbers calculated in the original report, in Employee
Headcount, page 95. Milwaukee headcount is still calculated as 3 in both reports.
Employee Headcount, Call Center First
If you remove Call Center from the report, Region is now the lowest (and only)
attribute, so the metric calculates headcount for each region, as shown below:
Region Headcount
This default level is called the report level, since the metrics are evaluated at the
level of the attribute on each report. For example, a revenue metric is set to the

report level. When the metric is placed on a report containing Region, the metric
calculates regional revenue. When it is placed on a report containing Customer,
the revenue is calculated for each customer.
You can set the level within the metric, allowing you to specify the attribute(s) to
calculate the metric at, regardless of what attributes are used on any report that
the metric is placed upon. These are called level metrics, and they are useful for
determining the contribution of one object to the whole. For example, they can
help you determine the contribution to revenue and profit of products bought by
your top customers. Level metrics are discussed in the Advanced Analytics class.
Exercise 3.6: Create simple metrics

In this exercise, we will create:
• A Cost metric and save it in a new folder called My Metrics Exercises.

 Define the Cost metric as a sum of the Cost fact.
 Format the values as currency with two decimal points. Format the values
so that negative numbers display in red with no negative sign or
parentheses.
• A Revenue metric and save it in your My Metrics Exercises folder.


Define the Revenue metric as a sum of the Revenue fact.

Format the values as currency with two decimal points. Format the values
so that negative numbers display in red with no negative sign or
parentheses.
• A report that contains the Item attribute and your new Cost and Revenue
metrics. Save the report as Item, Cost, Revenue Report, then run it.

The first few rows of the report should look like the following:
Create the simple metric: Cost
1 On any MicroStrategy Web page, click Create and select New Metric.
The Metric Editor opens, in the Function Editor mode. The Function Editor allows
you to quickly and easily create and edit a metric.
• Use the Function Editor to create a metric that uses a function. The Function
Editor provides an easier-to-use interface.
• To type the metric formula directly, or to create a metric that combines

multiple metrics or contains custom expressions, you can use the Formula
Editor instead, by clicking Switch to Formula Editor. We will discuss the
Formula Editor when we create a compound metric later in this chapter.

2 From the Functions list on the left, double-click Sum to add it to the metric
definition window. You may need to scroll to find the function in the
alphabetical list.
When you select a function, its description is displayed at the bottom of the
Metric Editor. You can click Details to view the syntax and examples for the
function.
3 Select the Cost fact:
a Click the Browse icon next to the Search for a fact, metric or attribute
box.
b Click the Facts folder.
c Click the Cost fact.

Check the level of the metric
4 Click Show All. Notice that Level is set to Report Level. This allows the metric
to calculate at the level of the lowest attribute on any report that the metric is
placed on.
Optionally, you can use these settings to:
• Select the attribute level that the metric calculates at, by adding a level.
• Filter the data included in the metric, by adding a condition.
• Apply offset values such as “four months ago” or “last year”, by adding a
transformation.
Level, condition, and transformation metrics are covered in the Advanced

Analytics course.
Format the metric’s values
5 Click Format at the top right of the Metric Editor.

This formatting applies to the metric regardless of the report that it is placed
on.
6 In the Format window, select Metric Values from the drop-down list.
You can select different formatting options for metric column headers (the
title of the metric) and metric values (the numbers calculated by the metric
and displayed in the report).
7 Under Category, select Currency. By default, Decimals places is set to 2 and

Currency Symbol is set to $, which is the formatting that we want.

8 Select the Negative Numbers to display in red with no negative sign and no
parentheses.
9 Click OK to close the Format window.
Save the Cost metric
10 Click Save As, then navigate to the My Objects folder.
11 Click Create New Folder.
12 In the Create Folder window, type My Metric Exercises, then click OK.
13 Click the My Metric Exercises folder.
14 Save the new metric as Cost.
15 Click OK on the message that the metric was saved.
The MicroStrategy Tutorial project already contains another Cost metric, but it is
saved in a different folder.
Create a simple metric: Revenue
2 From the Functions list on the left, double-click Sum.
3 Find and add the Revenue fact.

4 Format the metric values:
• Category = Currency
• Negative Numbers = red, no negative sign, no parentheses
5 Save the metric in the My Metrics Exercises folder as Revenue.
The MicroStrategy Tutorial project already contains another Revenue metric, but it
is saved in a different folder.
Use the created metrics in a report
1 On any MicroStrategy Web page, click Create, point to New Report, then
select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane on the left, click Attributes, and click the Products
folder.
3 Drag Item to the rows of the template definition pane.
4 In the All Objects pane, navigate to My Personal Objects.
5 Click the My Objects folder, and then the My Metrics Exercises folder.
6 Drag the Revenue metric to the columns of the template definition pane.
7 Drag the Cost metric to the right of Revenue in the template definition pane.
Your report template should look like the following:
8 Click Save As.
9 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Item, Cost, Revenue

Report.
10 Click Run Newly Saved Report. Compare your results to the expected report
at the beginning of this exercise.

Compound metrics: Metrics made up of other metrics

A compound metric is a metric made up of other metrics. The following example
of a metric formula uses an arithmetic operator to create a compound metric out
of existing simple metrics:
Sum(Cost) + Sum(Profit)
where Cost and Profit are metrics. The addition operator (+) between the two
metrics makes this a compound metric. The metric formula of a simple metric is
made up of a mathematical function and the business facts stored in your data
source. For a compound metric, the formula contains other metrics as well.
If you familiar with function types, a metric that uses a non-group function such
as an OLAP function or a scalar function is also a compound metric. The following
example shows a compound metric that uses a non-group function, the running
average:
RunningAvg(Cost)
where Cost is a metric.
You create compound metrics using the Formula Editor mode of the Metric Editor.
This mode allows you to view the metric formula, type the metric formula directly,
and create compound metrics.
Smart metrics
One advantage of compound metrics compared to simple metrics is that
compound metrics can use smart totals. A compound metric with smart totals
enabled is often called a smart metric.
Smart totals define the evaluation order for the final calculation. A smart total
calculates subtotals on individual pieces of the compound metric, while a regular
total calculates subtotals by adding all the values for each row of the report. For
example, a smart metric uses the formula Sum (Metric1)/Sum (Metric2)
rather than Sum (Metric1/Metric2).
This is explained with a report in the following exercise.

Exercise 3.7: Create compound metrics and smart totals

We will create a compound metric called Profit Margin, using the Revenue and
Cost metrics that we created in the previous exercise. We will create a copy of the
compound metric that uses smart totals, and compare the subtotals of each
metric on a report.
• Define the Profit Margin metric as:
Sum(Revenue - Cost)/Revenue
• Edit the Profit Margin metric to allow smart totals, and save the metric as
Smart Profit Margin.
• Add the following to the Item, Cost, Revenue Report (created in the previous
exercise):

Category attribute

Profit Margin metric

Smart Profit Margin metric
When you run the new report, the first few rows should look like the following.
Notice that the two profit margin metrics calculate the same values.
Create the Profit Margin compound metric

2 Click Switch to Formula Editor.
3 From the Functions list on the left, double-click Sum, to add it to the metric
formula. You may need to scroll to find the function in the alphabetical list.
4 Add the Revenue metric to the metric formula:
a In the All Objects drop-down list, select My Objects.
b Select the My Metric Exercises folder.
c Double-click the Revenue metric.
5 In the metric definition pane, keep the cursor at the end of Revenue but inside
the parenthesis (as shown above). Click the Subtraction icon .
6 In the All Objects area, double-click the Cost metric to add it to the formula.

7 In the metric definition pane, move the cursor to the far right of the metric
definition (outside the parenthesis), then click the Division icon .
8 In the All Objects area, double-click the Revenue metric. The following
formula should display in the metric definition pane:
9 Click Validate above the metric definition.
If a green check mark displays at the bottom of the definition pane, you
defined the metric formula correctly. Otherwise, review the formula and try
again.
10 Format the metric values as percentage, with two decimal places:
a Click Format.
b Select Metric Values from the drop-down list.
c Change the Category to Percentage.

d Set Decimal Places to 2.
e Click OK.
11 Save the metric in the My Metrics Exercises folder, as Profit Margin.
The MicroStrategy Tutorial project already contains another Profit Margin metric,
but it is saved in a different folder.
Create the Smart Profit Margin compound metric
1 Navigate to the My Metrics Exercises folder, under My Objects.

2 Click the Profit Margin metric, to edit it.
3 In the Metric Editor, click Metric Options at the top right
4 Select Allow Smart Metric, then click OK.
5 Click Save As.
6 Save the metric in the My Metrics Exercises folder, as Smart Profit Margin.
Add the compound metrics to a report
1 On the MicroStrategy Web home page, select your My Reports folder (listed
on the left side).
2 Right-click the Item, Cost, Revenue report, and select Edit.
3 Click the All Objects tab in the accordion at the bottom right.
4 In the All Objects pane, click Hierarchies, then the Products hierarchy.
5 Drag the Category attribute to the left of Item in the template definition
pane.
6 In the All Objects pane, select My Personal Objects from the drop-down list.
7 Click the My Objects folder, then the My Metrics Exercises folder.
8 Drag Profit Margin and Smart Profit Margin to the right of Cost in the
9 Run the report.

10 Display the Category values at the top of the row, so that you can view them
easier:
a Right-click the Category header and select Advanced Formatting.
b In the Format: Template window, click the Alignment tab.
c In the Text Alignment area, from the Vertical drop-down list, select Top.
Notice that you are formatting the values for Category, not the header.
d Click OK.
The Profit Margin and Smart Profit Margin metrics should calculate the same
values for each row.
12 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Compound Metric-Profit

Margin.
Display subtotals
13 From the Data menu, select Show Totals.

14 Display the last page of the report, by clicking the Last icon at the bottom
of the window. Scroll down to the end of the report, to display the music
subtotals and the report’s grand totals.
• Notice that the totals for the Profit Margin metric (the third metric
displayed) are very high, at 501.13% and 4514.57%. It is displaying a sum
of all the metric values. In other words, the metric is calculated for each
row of the report, and then rolled up to the correct level (category or
grand total).
• The totals for the Smart Profit Margin metric (the last metric displayed) are
more reasonable, at 4.62% and 15.11%. This is because smart metrics
calculate subtotals on individual elements of the compound metric. This
means that the smart metric adds all the revenue values together, adds all
the cost values together, subtracts the cost sum from the revenue sum,
and divides that by the revenue sum.
15 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Compound Metric-Profit

Margin-Subtotals.
Selecting subtotals and totals for metrics

You can enable subtotals and grand totals for a metric, so that analysts can display
them on a report at run time. You must decide what function will be used to
calculate a subtotal or grand total for a given metric. You can enable several
different subtotals from which analysts can choose, depending on their analysis
needs.
Grand totals (usually called totals) and subtotals allow users to control how
metrics are further calculated at different levels (such as by quarter, by year, by
region, and so on), and they can be applied dynamically by the analyst to any
report on which a metric is used that has the totals or subtotals enabled.
When you enable a total or subtotal for a metric, you select a function by which
the metric should be aggregated to display the total or subtotal. You can use one
of many standard functions such as total, count, minimum, maximum, standard
deviation, and others.

You can also create your own functions to be used with subtotal calculations. For
details on creating your own function, see the MicroStrategy Advanced Reporting
Guide.
You may want to remove, or disable, a grand total or subtotals for a particular
metric. For example, if the metric counts inventory numbers, subtotals may be
irrelevant and should therefore not be displayed on a report.
Exercise 3.8: Display subtotals

In this exercise, we disable the metric level Total Subtotal. Next, we create a new
report using Item, Revenue, and Cost. Finally, we display Average, Maximum, and
Standard Deviation subtotals on the new report.
The first few rows of the report should look like the following.
Save the report as Item, Cost, and Revenue with Subtotals.

Disable Total and Average subtotals for the Cost metric
1 Navigate to your My Metric Exercises folder, right-click the Cost metric, and
select Edit.
2 In the Metric Editor, click Metric Options at the top right.
3 On the Subtotals tab, in the drop-down list, select None, to disable the Total
subtotal.
4 From the Subtotals You Want Available For This Metric list, select Average,
Maximum, and Standard Deviation subtotals.
5 Click OK and then click Save.
Create a report to display the subtotals
1 Click Create Report and select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane, click the Products hierarchy.
3 Drag Item to the rows in the template definition pane.

4 In the All Objects pane, navigate to My Personal Objects.
5 Select the My Objects folder.
6 Select the My Metrics Exercises folder.
7 Drag Revenue to the columns in the template definition pane.
8 Drag Cost to the right of Revenue in the template definition pane.
9 Click Run Report.
11 In the Subtotals Editor, on the Definitions tab, in the All Subtotals column,
select the Average, Maximum, and Standard Deviation check boxes.
12 On the Display tab, under Subtotal Positions by Row, click Top of Each
Level.
13 Click OK to close the Subtotals Editor.
15 From the Report Home menu, click Save As.

16 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Item, Cost, and Revenue with
Subtotals Report.
Derived metrics
Derived metrics are metrics that a report analyst can use to perform calculations
based on report results. A derived metric performs a calculation on the fly with
the data available in a report without re-executing the report against the
database. Derived metrics are created based on existing metrics in the report.
Since derived metrics are evaluated in memory, their computation does not
require any SQL execution in the database. For MicroStrategy Web, derived
metrics are evaluated on Intelligence Server.
A report designer does not need to enable derived metrics for users to take
advantage of them.
Exercise 3.9: Create a derived metric

In this exercise, we will create and format a derived metric named Growth and use
it on a new report. We will use the Revenue metric that we created and the Last
Year’s Revenue metric in the derived metric’s formula. We will filter the report to
display data only from the year 2014. The final report should look like the
following:
114 Derived metrics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Create the Growth derived metric
1 Select Create, select New Report, then select Blank Report.
2 In the All Objects pane, click the Geography hierarchy.
3 Drag Call Center into the rows of the template definition pane.
4 In the All Objects pane, select My Personal Objects, then My Objects, and
then My Metrics Exercises.
5 Drag the Revenue metric to the columns of the template definition pane.
6 In the All Objects pane, navigate to Public Objects, then Metrics, then the
Sales Metrics folder.
7 Select the Transformation Sales Metrics folder.
8 Drag Last Year’s Revenue metric to the right of Revenue in the template
definition pane.
9 In the All Objects pane, navigate to the Time hierarchy and select Year.
10 Drag 2014 to the Report Filter definition pane.
11 Run the report. The report results should look like the following:
12 In the report, right-click a metric header and select Insert Metric, then New.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Derived metrics 115

13 For the metric name, type Growth.
14 Above the metric definition pane on the right, click the Parenthesis ( ).
15 From the Report Objects folder, double-click Revenue.
16 With the cursor still inside the parenthesis, click the subtraction operator (-).
17 From the Report Objects folder, double-click Last Year’s Revenue.
18 Move the cursor outside the parentheses, to the far right of the definition.
Then click the division operator.
19 From the Report Objects folder, double-click Last Year’s Revenue.
The parentheses play a crucial role in the order of operations because calculations
in parentheses are performed before other calculations in the metric formula. You
need to divide the difference between Revenue and Last Year’s Revenue by Last
Year’s Revenue. Without parentheses, the division would occur first, producing
undesired derived metric values.
The Metric Editor should now look like the image below:
20 Click Save.
116 Derived metrics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

21 In the report, right-click the Growth metric header and select Advanced
Formatting.
22 Select Growth from the left drop-down menu, and Values from the right
drop-down menu.
23 On the Number tab, select Percentage.
24 Click OK to close the window.
26 In the Report Home menu, click Save As.
27 Save the report in the My Reports folder as Growth Data.
Additional advanced metric options
VLDB properties
You can alter the syntax of a SQL statement and take advantage of the unique,
database-specific optimizations for a metric by defining VLDB (Very Large Data
Base) properties.
For example, the Integer Constants In Metric property determines whether to add
a “.0” after an integer (a whole number). This prevents imprecise rounding when
division is performed. The Null Check property indicates how to handle arithmetic
operations that contain null values. When the null check is performed, null values
are changed to zero in arithmetic calculations (+, -, *, and /). There are several
metric-specific VLDB properties available.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Additional advanced metric options 117

The default setting for each VLDB property is inherited. You can set additional
VLDB properties at other levels, such as the report and project levels.
Joins
You can define how the data for a metric displays on a report using the options in
the Joins tab of the Advanced Metric Options dialog box. For example, a report
contains Sales metric data across several sales regions. Applying metric join
settings, you can:
• Display data only for regions for which sales information is available (inner
join)
• Display data regardless of whether or not sales information is available (outer
join)
• Define how the expressions or metrics in a compound metric are joined
together.
118 Additional advanced metric options © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

For background information on compound metrics, see the Advanced Metrics

chapter in the Advanced Reporting Guide.
Creating attribute categorizations

You can define how your data is grouped and displayed on a report, including
providing intuitive names that do not appear in your data source. You can do this
by creating custom groups or derived elements.
Custom groups are dynamic and can be made up of elements from different
attributes; each element in a custom group may create a separate pass in your
SQL query to your data source. So custom groups are effective when flexibility is
important in defining a custom set of elements to display on a report.
Unlike custom groups, derived elements can be created on the fly within a report.
They are restricted to a single attribute, and are not dynamic, which means that all
calculations are performed by the Analytical Engine. Derived elements are
evaluated on the report dataset without regenerating or re-executing SQL.
Derived elements are most useful for fastest performance.
Custom groups
A custom group lets you combine specific attribute elements into a group of
elements to be displayed together on a report. Custom groups allow you to group
and display attribute elements in a way that is not defined in your data source. For
example, you might create filters to bring back data that is displayed as Top 5
Customers, Top 5 Employees, and Top 5 Items on the same report.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Creating attribute categorizations 119

A custom group is a group of filters that are defined to bring back from your data
source so that they can display a specifically defined set of attribute elements. A
custom group applies these different filters to different rows of a report.
Exercise 3.10: Create a custom group

In this exercise, we will create a custom group named Distribution Center Groups
and use it on a previously defined report (the Growth Data report) that will
change its purpose. This custom group will allow the data to be further
segmented based on geographic region. Then we will add a Rank metric based on
Revenue. When completed, your report should look like the following:
Create the custom group
1 Click Create Custom Group.
Create a custom group element
2 Click New Custom Group Element.
3 In the Condition Editor, click Browse.
4 Navigate to Attributes, then to the Geography folder.
120 Creating attribute categorizations © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

5 Select Distribution Center, then select In List.
6 In the list on the right, select Washington DC, New York, and Boston.
7 Click OK to close the Condition Editor window.
8 Click the custom group element name (Element 1) and rename it to

Northeast.
9 Hover your cursor over your new Northeast custom group and click Element
Display Options at the far right, as shown below. Select Display Element
Name And Individual Items from the drop-down list, then click Save.
Create the remaining custom group elements
10 Repeat the steps in Create a custom group element, page 120 to create the
following elements:

• Central
• Southeast
• West
• Europe
Use the image below to determine which attribute elements to add to each
custom group element you are creating.
Name and save the custom group
11 Click Enter Custom Group Name Here at the top, and type Distribution
Center Groups. When completed, your custom group should look like this:
12 Click Save as, and then create a new folder in My Objects named My Custom
Groups.
13 Save the new custom group as Distribution Center Groups.
Create a report to display the custom group
1 In MicroStrategy Web, click My Reports.
2 Right-click the Growth Data report and select Edit.
3 In the Report Editor, remove from the report:
• Call Center attribute

• Growth metric
• Year report filter
4 In the All Objects pane, navigate to the folder My Custom Groups, and
double-click Distribution Center Groups to add it to the report.
5 In the All Objects pane, navigate to the Time hierarchy.
6 Drag Year to the Page-by definition pane. (If the Page-by definition pane is
not visible, run the report and, from the Tools menu, click Page-by Axis. Then
return to Design Mode.)
7 Right-click the Revenue metric header in the report definition template, then
select Insert Metric, then Rank, then Break by Year, then Descending.
8 Run the report.
9 Right-click the Rank (Revenue) Break By (Year) metric, and select Sort, then
select Ascending.
10 Right-click the Rank (Revenue) Break by (Year) metric, and click Rename.
Rename it Rank (Revenue).
11 Compare your report results to the report example at the start of this exercise.
12 Save the report.
Derived elements
A derived element is a grouping of attribute elements on a report. Derived
element groups are defined by a list, filter, or calculation. Like a custom group, a

derived element group provides a new view of report data for analysis and
formatting purposes.
You can do more than just simple combinations of attribute elements with
derived elements. For example, after you have defined a custom “East Coast”
derived element, you can determine the East Coast region’s percent contribution
to profit. With derived elements you can also create custom sort orders for
attribute elements, use aggregation functions such as Average to combine
attribute elements, and perform other analysis and formatting tasks.
In the following exercise, you will create a report displaying a derived element
that you create, and the report will fetch its data from a MicroStrategy Intelligent
Cube.
Derived elements work on Intelligent Cube reports as well as non-Intelligent Cube

reports. Intelligent Cubes are multi-dimensional cubes (sets of data) that allow
you to use OLAP Services features on reports, as well as share sets of data among
multiple reports. MicroStrategy Intelligent Cube Technology allows you to create
these Intelligent Cubes, which operate within MicroStrategy Intelligence Server.
An Intelligent Cube is a set of data that can be shared as a single in-memory copy,
among many different reports created by multiple users. Rather than returning
data from the data source for a single report, you can return sets of data from your
data source and save them directly to Intelligence Server memory. The reports
accessing Intelligent Cubes can use all of the OLAP Services features for analysis
and reporting purposes.
Exercise 3.11: Create derived elements

In this exercise, we will create a report based on an Intelligent Cube. You can
combine data from multiple attribute elements into a single display item (a
derived element), then display the derived element in a report. You can save your
new group of data rows as a derived element, to be used again on a different
report or document.
To use a derived element on another report or document, the other report or

document must contain the attribute that the derived element was originally
based on.

Your completed report should look like the following:
Create derived elements on a report
1 Click Create Report.
2 Select Intelligent Cube report.
3 In the Select Intelligent Cube window, using the All Objects pane, navigate to
Shared Reports, then Subject areas, Daily Analysis, Support Objects, Cube
Memphis Discounts, and then click OK.
4 Drag the following objects onto the template definition pane, as shown
below:

Category

Subcategory

Revenue


Cost

Discount

Profit

Profit Margin
5 Run the report. It should look like this:

Create a derived element
6 Right-click Category in the executed report, and select Derived Elements.
7 In the Derived Elements window, click New.
8 Name the first derived element Books and Movies, then click the green check
mark.

9 At the bottom of the window, on the Definition tab, move the Books and
Movies elements from the Available pane to the Selected pane on the right.
10 Click Apply.
Create the other derived element
11 Repeat the steps in Create a derived element, page 127 to create the derived
element Electronics and Music.
12 Click OK to close the Derived Elements window. Your report should now look
like the following:

Notice the Category attribute in the Report Objects pane on the left now indicates
a derived element function has been applied to the attribute (the fx next to
Category), indicating your new definitions, as shown below:
Add totals
14 On the Advanced tab, select Across Level, and select Category and
Subcategory.
15 Click OK. Your report should look like the report sample at the beginning of
the exercise.

4
DELIVERING AND SHARING
REPORTS
Exporting reports
You can export a report to convert it to any of these formats:
• CSV file (Comma-Separated Values)

• HTML
• Microsoft Excel

Plain text (recommended for large reports)

Formatted
• PDF
• Plain text
Before you export a grid report, you can adjust several export options, including
the following:
• Exporting the whole report or only the portion that is currently displayed
• Include the report title
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Exporting reports 130

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Delivering and Sharing Reports 4
• Include the report filter details (information about the filters on the reports
• Update report data using MicroStrategy Office (must have Office installed)
• Save the current prompt answers to use them for the next export
For a comprehensive list of all export options, see Appendix A, Export Options.
To export a report
1 Run a report.
2 From the Report Home menu, point to Export, and select the application
format to see the report results in.
3 In the Export Options window, from the Application drop-down list, select
the format to export to.
4 Select the export options, as described above.
5 Click Export to save the newly generated file format to your local machine.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Exporting reports 131

4 Delivering and Sharing Reports Introduction to Analytics Reporting
Subscribing to reports for automatic delivery

You can have a report automatically delivered to:
• Your History List in MicroStrategy Web
The History List is a folder where you can store reports and documents.
Besides viewing the results of scheduled reports and documents, you can use
it to keep shortcuts to previously run reports and documents, similar to the
Favorites list available in web browsers.
• A mobile device (using MicroStrategy Mobile)
• An email address
• A network folder location
• A printer
• An FTP server
• Your cache
A cache is a pre-calculated and pre-processed result set that is stored in

memory on the Intelligence Server machine and on disk. A cache allows the
report to be run as quickly as possible using the latest available data, without
re-executing the request against the data source.
You can schedule deliveries to take place on a regular schedule or when a specific
event occurs. To do this, create a subscription to the report. Subscriptions allow
you to view reports when you need them.
Note: The following exercise walks you through delivering a report to your History List.
The process for other formats is similar, but each format uses specific settings. For
descriptions of each setting, click the Help button on the Web page.
Exercise 4.1: Deliver a report to your History

List on a schedule
In this exercise, we will:
• Subscribe a report to the History List
• View the report in the History List
• Remove the report subscription
132 Subscribing to reports for automatic delivery © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Subscribe a report to the History List
1 Open the Revenue, Costs, and Units Sold by Call Center and Subcategory
report, saved in your My Reports folder.
You created this report in the second exercise in Chapter 1.
2 From the Report Home menu, point to Subscribe To, and select History List.
3 In the Subscribe to History List window, select any schedule from the
Schedule drop-down list.
We will delete the subscription, so it is not important which schedule that you
choose.
The schedules listed are created in the MicroStrategy Developer Schedule

Manager.
4 Click To to locate the email address of the recipient.
5 In the Recipients Browser window, add MSTR User to the To List, and click OK.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Exercise 4.1: Deliver a report to your History List on a schedule 133
6 Click the Run Subscription Immediately check box. This will allow you to
view the History List update.
7 Click OK.
Check the History List update
1 Click the MicroStrategy icon in the top left, and select History List.
If you want to view the report, click the name of the report. You can also click
any of the icons in the Actions column to export the report, create a PDF, view
details, or rename it in the History List.
To cancel the subscription
1 Click the MicroStrategy icon in the top left of the page, and select My
Subscriptions. The My Subscriptions page opens.
134 Exercise 4.1: Deliver a report to your History List on a schedule © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.
The History List subscription is displayed, as shown below. If you want to view
the report, you can click its name.
2 Select the Unsubscribe check box for the subscription.
Sharing reports with other users

You can share a report with other MicroStrategy users by:
• Emailing the report or a link to the report.
• Adding the link in a document. When users view the document, they can click
the link to open a related report.
You can determine which users or user groups have access to an object and what
level of access they have (such as view only, ability to edit, and so on), by editing
the object's access control list (ACL).
Sharing options are determined by a variety of security features in MicroStrategy.

Applicable security options are described below:
• Privileges: Privileges allow users to access and work with various functionality
within the software.
Privileges are assigned to users in the MicroStrategy system by an
administrator.
• ACLs: An object’s access control list (ACL) is the list of actions that can be
performed on that object, based the rights assigned to individual users or
groups of users.
ACLs are assigned to objects, typically by the object’s owner.
• Security filters: Security filters enable you to control what data users can see
when that data is accessed through MicroStrategy. A security filter can be
assigned to a user or user group to narrow the result set when they execute
reports or browse elements. The security filter applies to all reports,
documents, and attribute element requests submitted by a user. Security
filters serve a similar function to database-level techniques such as database
views and row level security.
Security filters are typically assigned by an administrator.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Sharing reports with other users 135

Sending reports and bursting large reports into smaller

files
The Send Now option allows you to send a report immediately to any email
address. You can choose to:
• Send the report in the email. Available formats are HTML, Excel, PDF, plain text,
or CSV.
• Send the report in the email and deliver it to the History List.
• Deliver the report to the History List, and send the report and a link in the
email.
• Deliver the report to the History List, and send a link in the email.
Sending a report delivers it immediately and only once. Creating an email

subscription delivers the report repeatedly on a schedule.
Large reports that contain a lot of data can be split into multiple, smaller files. This
is referred to bursting. Each of the smaller files contains a portion of data based on
the attributes used to group the report in the page-by.
Recall that page-by turns a long report into a set of individual pages, allowing you to
focus on one page (or subset of data) at a time.
Send a report to a user
1 Open a report.
2 From the Report Home menu, select Send Now.
3 In the Send Now window, click To to locate the email address of the recipients.
4 In the Recipients Browser window, choose recipients from the Available list
and add them to the To, Cc, or Bcc lists.
• If you do not see the correct recipient to use, type the Address Name and
Physical Address (the email address) in the respective fields, and select a
Device. Click Add to Recipients; the new recipient is added to the
Available list.
5 Click OK to save the recipients.
136 Sharing reports with other users © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

6 In the Send Now window, from the Send drop-down list, specify how the
report is delivered by choosing one of the following options:
• To send the report in the email, select Data in email.
• To send the report in the email and deliver it to the History List, select Data
in email and to History List.
• To send the report and a History List link in the email, and deliver the
report to the History List, select Data and link to History List in email.
• To send a link in the email and deliver the report to the History List, select
Link to History List in email.
7 From the Delivery Format drop-down list, select the format to send the
report in:
• CSV
• Excel
• HTML
• PDF
• Plain text
8 If you select a format other than HTML, you can:
• Reduce the size of the attachment by selecting the Compress contents

check box.
• Change the File Name.
9 If you select the plain text format, from the Delimiter drop-down list, select
the character to use to separate values in the report or document.
10 If the report is paged by an object, the Expand Page-by Fields check box is
displayed. Select the check box to print all objects in the page-by when the
report is emailed.
11 In the Subject line, type a description for the emailed report.
12 To display a message in the body of the email, type the text in the Message
field.
13 The Advanced options allow you to add a password to the zip file and change
the zip file’s name. Also, if you have selected a contact group as the recipient
of the report, the security filter of the contact group as a whole is applied

when the report is delivered. You can instead select to use the separate
security filters for each member of the subscribed contact group instead.
14 Click OK. The report is emailed to the addresses and, if the option was
selected, delivered to the History List.
Burst a large report
To use the bursting functionality to split a report into multiple files, the report
must contain at least one attribute in the page-by. The page-by items are the
basis on which a file is split into multiple files. If the report is paged by metrics,
bursting is not available.
1 Open the report.
2 From the Report Home menu, select Send Now.
3 In the Send Now window, click Burst.
If a “No bursting elements available” message is displayed, you must place at

least one attribute on the Page-by panel.
4 The Select Bursting Criteria window opens, with all the attributes used to
group the report displayed in the Available Attributes list. In the Available
Attributes list, select the attributes to use to split the data, and click > to

move them to the Selected Attributes list. When the email is sent, a separate
file is automatically created for each element of each selected attribute.
5 Complete the rest of the fields, as described in Send a report to a user, page 136.
6 Click OK. The report is sent to the designated email addresses.
Sharing a link URL reflecting latest changes and prompt

answers
You can provide a link URL to a report to other users. The link URL contains the ID
of the object and any changes that were made to the report since the link URL
was generated. If the report has prompts, the link URL also contains any prompt
answers saved in the report.
You can share the link URL by:
• Emailing it to users.
• Copying it and adding it to a document. When users view the document, they
can click the link to run the report.
• Embedding it in HTML code to display in an iFrame, and copying the HTML.

You can then embed the HTML code in a web page to display the object.
Besides a report, a link URL can also connect to:
• A dashboard or document. When the link URL is clicked, the object is

executed.
• A folder. When the link URL is clicked, the folder opens.

• Another object, such as a filter or prompt. When the link URL is clicked, the
object opens in its editor (Filter Editor, Prompt Editor, and so on).
Note: Your administrator must include session information, such as the server
name and port number, in the URL of pages displayed in MicroStrategy Web. This
setting is available to administrators in the MicroStrategy Web Administration
pages.
Email a link URL to a report
1 Do one of the following:
• Navigate to the folder location of the report, right-click the report, and
select Share. The email will be sent when the report is next executed.
• In the report, from the Report Home menu, click Share.
2 To change permissions for users and user groups, adjust the settings under
Who Has Access.
For a description of the permissions, click the Help icon on the window.
3 Click Email. Your email editor opens. The subject line of the email is Link To,
followed by the name of the object. The message contains the same text,
followed by the actual link in the next line.
4 Type the recipient.

5 You can add to or change the subject line and message.
6 Click Send to send the message and return to the Share dialog box.
7 Click Close.
Provide a link URL in a document
You can provide the link URL of a report as a link within a document, so a user
viewing the document can click the link. For example, you create a document
with sales data for several different product categories. Add a link in the
document to a report with detailed sales information for a specific product
category. When a user clicks the link while viewing the document, the report
automatically runs and is displayed to the user.
1 Navigate to the folder location of the object. Right-click the object, and select
Share.
2 To change permissions for users and user groups, adjust the settings under
Who Has Access.
For a description of the permissions, click the Help icon on the window.
3 Click Link. The link URL of the object is displayed. Select the link URL, then
press CTRL + C to copy the link URL to the clipboard.

4 Click Close. You can now paste the link URL into a text field or image in a
document.
To embed HTML code in a Web page
You can display an object in a Web page by embedding the URL in HTML code to
display in an iFrame within the document. Once you generate this code using the
steps below, you can embed it in a web page to display the object.
1 Navigate to the folder location of the object. Right-click the object, and select
Share.
2 Click Embed. The HTML is displayed.
You can specify the size of the iFrame, and choose to hide specific sections of a
dashboard, document, or report, such as the toolbar or header. For example,
you can display a report with sales data in an iFrame that is 500 pixels wide
and 300 pixels tall, with no navigation bar.
3 Type the width of the iFrame in the Width field, and type the height of the
iFrame in the Height field.
4 For each section of the dashboard, document, or report, do one of the

following:
• To display the section when the report is displayed in the iFrame, clear the
check box next to the section.

• To hide the section when the report is displayed in the iFrame, select the
check box next to the section.
5 The HTML code for the iFrame is displayed in the field. Select the code, then
press CTRL + C to copy the link to the clipboard.
6 Click Close. You can paste the code into a Web page.

5
VISUALIZATIONS
Overview
Over the last year, the three New York locations of the fast-food restaurant Blazin’
Burger have produced mixed financial results. You, the regional manager, have
been tasked with analyzing the performance data from each location, gathering
additional external data, and identifying the causes of these results.
Your first assignment is to create a presentation-ready dashboard to monitor the

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all three restaurant locations. To achieve
this, you have been given access to the latest Sales and Marketing data for those
locations.

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Visualizations 5
Connect to your data

To determine what factors are driving the performance of the three restaurant
locations you were tasked with analyzing, you will need to connect to the data.
Once you have connected to the data, you will be able to begin visualizing it to
find new insights. The data you will be analyzing is available as an Excel
spreadsheet.
1 In your Secure Cloud environment, in MicroStrategy Web, click Create

Dashboard.
2 On the Dashboard Datasets panel, click Add Data. The Connect to Your Data
page opens.
MicroStrategy allows you to quickly and intuitively connect to almost any data
source, from tabular data like Excel spreadsheets, to Hadoop big data sources,
cloud-based applications, and relational databases.
3 You want to access data stored in an Excel file, so choose the File From Disk
option from the available data sources.
4 Click Choose Files to find and import a spreadsheet from your local
machine.
5 Find the Regional_Store_Performance.xlsx file on the Windows desktop, select

it, and click Open.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Connect to your data 145

5 Visualizations Introduction to Analytics Reporting
6 Click Prepare Data in the dialog box to refine the data you are importing.
7 Make sure the check box for the first sheet of the dataset, 3 Locations, is
selected. Click Select to move to the next step.

If the Excel file has several sheets, the Select Worksheets screen allows you to
import multiple sheets at once as part of the same dataset. Each sheet is imported
as a separate table within the dataset and you can create joins between tables.
The Preview screen presents a preview of the data. You can review a sample of
the data in the dataset, the mapping of the columns as attributes or metrics,
and the data type of each column. This dataset contains sales metrics for each
146 Connect to your data © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

fast food location for the first quarter of 2014. In addition, metrics related to
sales performance for each restaurant are also included.
MicroStrategy automatically maps the columns as attributes (your business

dimensions) and metrics (your performance indicators or KPIs) that will be
available for analysis. This mapping is based on the column data types, and
content. If any adjustments are needed, they can be performed here.
You have a problem–the dataset you are trying to analyze is not in the right
format, so it needs to be cleaned before you can start finding insights. Use the
Data Wrangling feature to easily and quickly clean up the data without leaving
MicroStrategy Web.
8 On the Preview screen, click Wrangle to start refining your data.
By default, 1000 rows of data are previewed during data wrangling. In a large
dataset, 1000 rows are not always representative of the data as a whole. You can
increase the sample size in the Set Sample Size field to view up to an additional
10,000 rows. Additional rows are added to the original1000 rows.
9 On the Data Wrangling interface, click the Camis – Location ID column header
to display the suggested options for that data column.
10 You want to split the data into two columns. From the Select Function
drop-down list, select Split on Separator. This function splits the selected

data, including the header, into separate columns or cells at the specified
character.
11 From the next drop-down list, choose Other to input a custom separator.
Type - (a dash). Click Apply.
12 The Camis – Location ID column is now split into two columns.
The Data Wrangling tool creates a script of all the actions that you perform on the
dataset. This script can be saved to your machine, uploaded at a later date, and

applied to a new dataset to significantly speed up the process of preparing the

dataset for analysis. This script is displayed at the top right of the screen.
13 The Country column contains many incomplete values, so you need to fill
them before analyzing the data. Click the column header to select it, and then
click Fill Down in the list of suggested operation. The Fill down function
copies the selected data into blank space. In this case, United States is copied
into all the blank cells of the Country column.
14 The “New York” entries in the State column are capitalized differently, so they
need to be edited to display the same value. To view a summary of the
content of the column, click the arrow icon in the State column, and select
Text Selector.

15 In the State box, hover over the new york entry and click Edit.
16 Click New York in the list of values that is displayed. Click the Apply To All
icon to transform all the new york values to New York.
17
18 Now that your have refined your data, click OK, to leave the Data Wrangling
interface. Click Finish to import the data into the dashboard.
You can add hierarchical levels to time and geographic columns, and add
geo-coding to geographic levels to display information through ESRI Maps
integration.
This icon is displayed for the Country, Latitude, Longitude Location Zip, and
State. This indicates that the attributes have already been identified as a
geographic type and will be automatically enriched with geo-coding data.
19 In the Dashboard Datasets panel, right-click the Calendar Date attribute,

point to Create Time Attributes, and select the Day of Week check box.
Click OK to create the new time attribute.

The new attribute is displayed with a slightly different attribute icon, to

indicate that it is a derived attribute.
20 Right-click the Revenue metric, point to Number Format, and click the
Currency button to format all the Revenue values as currency (with a $,
negative numbers in parentheses, and so on). Click OK.
21 Click Save on the toolbar.
22 In the Save As window, navigate to the My Reports folder and save your
dashboard as Restaurant Location Analysis.
Visualize your data

Now that your dataset has been imported and prepared, you can start creating
visualizations to explore and analyze the data.
1 In the Dashboard Datasets panel, double-click Location Description to add

it to the rows of the grid visualization.

2 Drag Calendar Date from the Dashboard Datasets panel to the Rows area
of the Editor panel and drop it below Location Description.
3 Drag and drop Revenue to the Metrics area of the Editor panel. Your
visualization should look like the image below.
The grid you created contains all the daily revenue information for each
restaurant location. Notice that the Revenue values are displayed as currency.
Now you want to consume this information in a more visual way to find
hidden trends and patterns in the data.
4 Click the Line Chart icon on the Visualization Gallery to transform the grid
intro a line chart matrix, which displays revenue over time for each restaurant
location.

5 Drag Location Description from the Vertical area of the Editor panel, to the
Color By area to view all the revenue information in one area chart, where
each colored area represent one restaurant, as indicated by the legend.
You can now easily see in the line chart how revenue for all three locations was
very similar until the middle of February, when the Brooklyn location
remained constant, Upper West Side improved greatly, and Lower Manhattan
worsened. Now that you have identified revenue trends, create additional
visualizations to find other insights.
6 Add a second visualization to the dashboard by clicking the Insert

Visualization icon on the toolbar.
7 Click the Bar Chart icon in the Visualization Gallery.

8 Drag and drop the Location Description attribute from the Dashboard
Datasets panel into the Vertical area of the Editor panel, and Calendar Date
(Day Of Week) into the Horizontal area.
9 In the Dashboard Datasets panel, right-click the Revenue metric, point to

Aggregate by, then choose Average to create a derived metric.
10 Drag and drop your new derived metric, which is named Avg (Revenue),
into the Color by area of the Editor panel.
11 Right-click the Order Count metric, point to Aggregate by, then choose
Average to create a similar derived metric for Order Count.
12 Drag and drop the metric that you just created, Avg (Order Count), to the
Size by area of the Editor panel.

You have now visualized the changes in average order numbers throughout
the course of a week for all three restaurant locations. The size of the squares

indicates that the Brooklyn location sells much more on weekends than it
does during the work week. The Lower Manhattan restaurant sells more
during the work week than on the weekend, and the Upper West Side location
is more consistent throughout the week, with a slight increase on weekends.
There are multiple ways to visualize this data, each with a different view on the
information.
13 Click the Heat Map icon in the Visualization Gallery to transform your
visualization into a heat map.
The new heat map you have created allows you to easily and quickly compare
average order counts and revenue across all three locations for specific days of
the week. The color indicates the average revenue and the size of each box
indicates the average order count for that day in a specific location. To expand the
analysis to other types of data, you can create more visualizations.
Let’s create a third visualization to further explore the Order Count and Item
Count data.
14 Click the Insert Visualization icon on the toolbar to add a third

visualization to your dashboard.

15 To organize the dashboard content, click the title bar of Visualization 1 and
drag the visualization up until the upper edge of the dashboard is highlighted
in blue. Drop it there.
16 Click Visualization 3 to continue working on it.
17 Click the Bubble Chart icon in the Visualization Gallery.
18 Drag and drop the Order Count metric from the Dashboard Datasets panel
to the Vertical area of the Editor panel, and the Item Count metric to the
Horizontal area.
19 Drag and drop the Calendar Date attribute to the Break by area of the
Editor panel, and the Location Description attribute to the Color by area.

20 Right-click the Order Count metric label in the bubble chart, and choose
Enable trend line for Order Count to plot a trend line.

Now that you have analyzed the KPIs in the dataset and identified which
restaurant locations are performing the worst, you want to find the cause for
these problems. To achieve this goal, you need to use data blending to bring in
additional datasets. In this case, you import data from a database of New York
Health Inspection results.
Connect to your data - Part II

The first dataset provides many insights into the performance of each restaurant
location, but you have another data source, a database, that can be useful in this
analysis.
1 To add another dataset to your dashboard, click the Add Data icon on
the toolbar, and select New Data.
2 In the Connect to Your Data window, click Database.
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Connect to your data - Part II 157

3 In the Select Import Options window, select Pick Tables, and click Next.
4 In the Data Sources panel, select Health MySQL.
5 In the Available Tables panel, select health_inspection_db from the

Search for a namespace drop-down list.
6 Drag and drop the nyc health inspections table from the Available Tables
panel to the Editor panel in the middle of the page. This adds the table to your
imported data.
8 Click Prepare Data to preview and modify your data.
Prepare Your Data - Part II

1 In the Preview window, review the data from the database and then click All
Objects View in the top right of the window.
158 Connect to your data - Part II © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

2 In the All Objects View window, drag and drop all objects, except the Score
metric, from the Metrics section to the Attributes section.
3 In the Attributes column, notice that Zipcode uses the geographic pin icon,
showing that the attribute is geocoded.
4 Right-click Inspection Date, point to Change Data Type, and select Date.
5 Now that you have connected to the database and cleaned the data, click
Save to exit the All Objects View window, and Finish to leave the Preview
window.

6 In the Data Access Mode window, select Import as In-memory Dataset.
The NYC Health Inspections dataset is now added to the Dashboard Datasets
panel.
You can toggle between live connection and in-memory at any time during their
analysis. This can be done from the dashboard directly when editing the dataset.
Live connectivity bypasses in-memory requirements for faster analysis directly
from the data source, which is mainly useful for dynamic data sources that update
frequently.
7 Now that you have added a second dataset, save the dashboard (click Save
on the toolbar).

8 Right-click the Business Name attribute from the NYC Health Inspections
dataset, and choose Link to other dataset.
9 In the Link Attributes dialog box, select Location Description from the
drop-down list, then click OK.
10 Repeat the same process to link the Inspection Date attribute to Calendar
Date.

11 Right-click the Score metric in the NYC Health Inspections dataset, point to
Aggregate by, and select Average to create a derived metric that provides
the average health inspection score.
Visualize your data

1 Click the Add Sheet tab (marked with +) to add a second sheet to the
dashboard. This second sheet will use data from the NYC Health Inspection
dataset.
2 On the Dashboard Datasets panel, collapse the Regional Store Performance

dataset, so that you can focus on the NYC Health Inspection dataset.
3 On the new sheet, drag and drop the Zip Code attribute from the Dashboard
Datasets panel to the Rows area in the Editor panel, and the Avg (Score)
metric to the Metrics area.

4 Click the ESRI Map icon in the Visualization Gallery to change the
visualization type.
5 To change the color palette displayed on the map, right-click the Avg (Score)
metric in the Editor panel and choose Thresholds.
6 Select Red-Orange-Green from the Color drop-down list.
7 Click Reversed to switch the order of the colors, so that the colors run from
green to orange to red. Click OK.

The map shows the zip codes of New York colored by the average health
inspection score of the restaurants in that area. The lower the score, the better
the grade, so lower numbers are green and higher numbers are red. Now that
you see general trends for the city, find out how health inspection results
affected the revenue performance of each restaurant location.
8 Click the Insert Visualization icon on the toolbar to add a new

visualization.
9 Click the Bubble Chart icon in the Visualization Gallery.
10 From the Dashboard Datasets panel, drag and drop Avg (Score) to the
vertical axis of the new visualization.
11 Drag and drop the Inspection Date attribute to the horizontal axis.

12 To reduce the number of data points displayed, click the Insert icon on the
toolbar and choose Filter.
13 Drag and drop the Internal/External attribute from the NYC Health Inspections
dataset to the filter area.
14 To filter only the Bubble Chart, click Select Target on the filter. Click
Visualization 2 to select it and click Apply.

15 Hover your cursor over the filter and click the menu icon. The Allow Multiple
Selections option is selected by default. Click the option to disable it, which
means that only one selection can be displayed in the target visualization at a
time.
16 Filter Visualization 2 to display only the Blazin’ Burger location data points, by
clicking Internal in the filter.

17 Click Visualization 2 to continue working on it, then select the Editor panel
option to open the Visualization Editor.
18 In the editor, add the Business Name attribute to the Color By section of the
Bubble Chart.
19 Right-click the Avg (Score) metric label on the Bubble Chart axis and choose
Add Reference Line. Choose the Constant option and set it to 28, then click
OK. Any health inspection score above this line received a C grade, the lowest
possible result.

20 To observe the relationship between inspection results and revenue

performance, add the Revenue metric to the Vertical section.
In this Bubble Chart, you can compare the revenue performance and the
health inspection scores over time for all three (3) restaurant locations. It
becomes clear that the health inspection score heavily impacts revenue
performance for restaurant locations.
21 Click the Sheet 1 tab to go back to the first part of the analysis.
22 Take a moment to save your dashboard now that your analysis is done. Click
the Save icon.
23 Click the Insert button on the toolbar and then choose Text to add a text box
to the dashboard.

24 Click on the text box and type “Restaurant Performance Analysis”.
In the Properties panel, you can customize the look and feel of the text as well
as any other object on the dashboard. In order to start sharing this insightful
dashboard, you will need to add corporate branding.
25 In the properties panel, click the drop-down menu with the font name. Scroll
to and select Arial Black as your font.
26 Highlight the font size and type in 14.
27 Change the Text color to orange.

28 Use the alignment buttons to center align the text.
29 Click on the Insert button on the toolbar and select Image to add a logo to the
dashboard.
30 Input this link into the Image URL box: http://tinyurl.com/mstrworkshoplogo.

Click OK.
31 Click and drag the Image box to the left edge of the Text box.
32 Click on Visualization 1, and right click on one of the lines of the graph.

33 In the context menu that appears, select the Data Labels option, and then
Only Value.
34 Right-click on the color box in the legend of the line graph for the B.B.
Brooklyn location, and change the line color to yellow.
35 In the Properties panel, use the drop-down menu to select Title and Container.

36 Under the Title heading, click the Fill Color drop-down list and choose orange.
37 Under the Container heading, click the Fill Color drop-down list, then click o
the palette and select a light gray coloring in the color wheel, then click OK.
38 Now that your dashboard is formatted and complete, click on the

presentation mode button to view it full screen.

39 Your dashboard should look something like this:

A
EXPORT OPTIONS
Export options for grid reports

You can export a grid report to convert it to any of the formats listed below.
Retain report
Format structure and Comments
format?
CSV file No • Comma-separated values (CSV)
• Suitable for Microsoft Access and

Lotus 1-2-3
HTML Yes
Microsoft Excel®:
• Plain text No • Displays using Excel’s default settings
• Recommended over formatted Excel

option for large reports
• Formatted Yes
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Export options for grid reports 173

A Export Options Introduction to Analytics Reporting
Retain report
Format structure and Comments
format?
PDF Yes
Plain text No Choose a comma, tab, semicolon, or
space to separate fields of text
Before you export a grid report, you can adjust several export options. The
following table describes the options, and which formats each are available in.
Export Option CSV File HTML Excel PDF Plain Text
Export the whole report or only the X X X X X

portion that is currently displayed
Delimiter to use to separate data X
Scaling (adjusts the content to the X

page)
Page orientation X
Include cover page X
Include report title X X X X
Include report filter details (information X X X X

about the filters on the report)
Remove the extra “Metrics” column X X X X
Specify header and footer details X X X X
Format metric values as text or X X X

numeric
Format row and column headers as X X X

text
Export images as stand-alone or X

embed them
Update report data using X X X X

MicroStrategy Office
Note: Must have Office installed.
Save the current prompt answers to X X X X X

use them for the next export
174 Export options for grid reports © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Introduction to Analytics Reporting Export Options A
Export options for graph reports

You can export a graph report to convert it to any of these formats:
• HTML
• Microsoft Excel with formatting
• PDF
All export formats retain the report’s structure and format.
Before you export a graph report, you can adjust several export options. The
following table describes the options, and which formats each are available in.
Export Option HTML Excel PDF
Export the whole report or only the X X X

portion that is currently displayed
Scaling (adjusts the content to the X

page)
Page orientation X
Include cover page X
Include report title X X
Include report filter details (information X X

about the filters on the report)
Remove the extra “Metrics” column X X
Specify header and footer details X X
Format metric values as text or X

numeric
Format row and column headers as X

text
Export graphs as live Excel charts X
Export images as stand-alone or X

embed them
Update report data using X X

MicroStrategy Office
Note: Must have Office installed.
Save the current prompt answers to X X X

use them for the next export
© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Export options for graph reports 175

A Export Options Introduction to Analytics Reporting
176 Export options for graph reports © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

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Introduction to

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. 1

3. Creating Objects for

2 © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

A. Export Options Export options for grid reports..........................................................................173

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. 3

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Overview 4

The most common objects on reports are:

• Metrics: A metric represents a business measure or key performance

• Attributes: An attribute represents a business concept, such as Product,

A filter is displayed with this icon in Web: .

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Overview 5

Calculating business data: Metrics

Specifically, metrics define the analytical calculations to be performed against

Business context on a report: Attributes

6 Calculating business data: Metrics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

In the image above, Call Center is an attribute whose elements include

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Business context on a report: Attributes 7

Grouping related attributes: Hierarchies

8 Business context on a report: Attributes © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

Month attribute? To understand an attribute’s level, picture a hierarchy of related

In another example, suppose that your company is an Internet-based retailer and

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Business context on a report: Attributes 9

In the Geography hierarchy above, Country is the highest-level attribute and

Drilling into related data

10 Business context on a report: Attributes © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

© 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc. Business context on a report: Attributes 11

From Region, you can drill down to Call Center or Employee.

Exercise 1.1: Report basics

12 Exercise 1.1: Report basics © 2016 MicroStrategy, Inc.

In the following exercise, you will perform the following:

• Access MicroStrategy Web in your Secure Cloud environment

• Open a pre-designed report

• Modify the report by adding additional attributes and metrics

• View the report in Grid, Graph, and Grid/Graph modes

• Drill into the report to view a different level of data

Access your Secure Cloud environment

1 In the Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email, click Access

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The MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page opens in a browser window of

4 In the Remote Desktop Connection window, in the Computer Name box,

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You will be connected to the Windows machine in your Secure Cloud

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7 On the Windows desktop, click the shortcut for Google Chrome.

Close Chrome’s initial Welcome window, if displayed, to access the main

You do not need to set Google Chrome as the default browser.

8 In the Welcome to MicroStrategy Secure Cloud email, click Access

9 Copy the URL of your MicroStrategy Secure Cloud landing page.

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11 On the authentication page, click Credentials.

The system displays the option to log in.

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Open the Regional Profit and Margins report

1 In the MicroStrategy Tutorial project, click the Shared Reports icon .

2 Click the Subject Areas folder, then the Enterprise Performance

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Add attributes and metrics to the report

1 Add an attribute to the rows of the report:

b In the All Objects pane, click Attributes, then click Geography.

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Country is now displayed at the far left of the report: