Analyzing Data

The Design Panel is where you configure the crosstab. It consists of five tabs, but the primary tab you will use is the Analysis tab.

The Data Source area displays all fields of the data source available to analyze. If there are many fields, you can use the Find option to search for a specific field. The Rows/Columns areas display all fields that are currently in the rows or columns of the crosstab, and the Background Filter area displays member filters of dimensions that are not displayed in the crosstab but still restrict the data being read from the data source.

You can show or hide the Design Panel as well as choose to display technical names or not.

To analyze data in the crosstab, you drag fields from the Data Source area into the Rows/Columns area.

You are not restricted to using the Analysis tab to manipulate your crosstab. You can drag and drop directly within the crosstab to rearrange columns and rows.

Attributes are always associated with a particular dimension and are used to provide more information or detail about that particular dimension. For example, your data source may have a Customer dimension with attributes for Phone Number and Email Address. While you may not use the attribute information for primary analysis, it is often helpful to display in the crosstab.

If a dimension has attributes associated with it, you will see Attributes when you expand the dimension in the Data Source area of the Design Panel's Analysis tab. Expand Attributes and drag the appropriate field(s) to wherever the dimension is in the crosstab (Rows/Columns.)

Refreshing involves updating the data in the crosstab with the latest data from the data source. You manually refresh the data in the crosstab at any time by choosing Refresh All from the Analysis ribbon. Or, using the drop-down, you can refresh only a specific data source on your worksheet.

When you make a change to the crosstab, a data refresh is triggered, forcing Analysis to communicate with the data source system. Such refreshes can slow down your analysis when all you want to do is add a few fields to the rows/columns and/or filter data. You can use the Pause Refresh button in the Analysis ribbon to toggle this behavior off or on.

Toggle off the Pause Refresh button and perform as many navigation steps in the Analysis tab as you need to; the crosstab will not refresh after each step. Then toggle on the button; the crosstab is refreshed, with all your changes applied at once.

When the underlying data source changes in the system, choose Reset Data Source to see the changes in Analysis. You can also Reset Data Source to undo any changes you have made to the crosstab during your data analysis.

Note

Refreshing the data source will NOT update your crosstab with the changes to the data source.