Explorer

KPI explorer can be used to filter rows, columns and measures, sort by name or value and highlight row/column hierarchies using rules or ranges.

1. Overview

Before taking a detailed look, let's quickly look at some important features in KPI explorer.

Let's take a detailed look.

2. Interface

In this report, we have Region and Category hierarchies in rows, Dates in columns and Actuals and Plan as measures. Outline layout is used in this example, but all table and measure layouts are supported when using KPI Explorer.

a) Click on the 'Explorer' icon in the 'Analyze' section of the 'Home' tab.

b) KPI Explorer menu gets enabled as shown.

c) Let's go to the full view. Click on the arrow highlighted and select the 'Explorer full view' option.

d) The KPI Explorer full view is shown below. Let's minimize the toolbar to maximize real estate. Click on the highlighted arrow and select 'Unpin toolbar'.

e) The toolbar gets unpinned. Turn the 'Filter by date' toggle on.

f) The date filter slider gets enabled. The explorer toolbar consists of the following filters.

3. Filtering

Let's take a look at filtering by the row and column hierarchies.

a) Use the date filter slider to define a date range. Select a region and category. In the table, you can now see only International and Beverages for Q3 2020 to Q2 2021.

b) You can also see that the sub-region and sub-category get filtered accordingly in the explorer menu.

c) Clear the selections by clicking on the highlighted arrow and then the 'Clear all' option.

d) As you can see, there is a value against each hierarchy. Let's look at how the values are calculated. Since the measure selected in the dropdown is 'Actuals', you can see the actuals value for All and United States highlighted as (1) and (2).

Turn on the 'Column grand total' from the 'Totals' menu.

e) As shown in the below image, you can see the values highlighted in the case of the sub-regions.

f) To verify the values for categories and sub-categories, change the order of row and column hierarchies in the data mapping. That is assign Category and Sub category as 'Rows' and Region and Sub region as 'Columns' in the 'Visualizations' pane.

g) You can also explore other measures. Click on the dropdown highlighted and select 'Plan'.

h) The values get updated accordingly. As you can see, the values add up to 890.60 in all four hierarchies.

i) When you apply filters, let's explore how the values are displayed. Select 'International'. The values for APAC and EMEA are shown as highlighted. Similarly, the values for subcategories can be verified.

j) As you expand the sub-regions to reveal the categories, you can see that sum of plan values for beverages in APAC and EMEA is displayed.

k) The date filter slider toggle can be turned off to list the date hierarchy as filters.

4. Customizations

a) To hide certain KPIs, click on the arrow highlighted and the 'Show KPI' option.

b) KPIs can be hidden as shown.

c) Sorting can be done based on values or names. To sort the categories by values, click on the gripper icon and 'Sort by values'. Select 'Ascending'.

d) The categories are sorted in descending order (Z->A). You can see an icon as shown in the image that shows the applied sorting.

e) You can apply highlighting rules to the KPIs. Click on the 'Flag' icon as shown. There are two options - Rules and Ranges. Let's apply based on a range. You can define ranges based on percentage values or numeric values. Let's go with the default. Click 'Apply'.

f) The values get highlighted as shown. The flag icon is also modified to indicate that highlights have been applied.

g) You can add ranges, reverse the icons and colors and delete ranges using the highlighted icons.

h) To 'reset' the ranges to default, click on the highlighted icon.

i) Ranges based on numeric values are shown below.

j) To apply highlights based on rules, select the 'Rules' option. Apply a rule as shown and click 'Apply'. The values are highlighted as shown.