Work with Dimensions in a Freeform Table

Learn all about working with dimensions in freeform tables, including adding them, sorting, filtering, breaking them down by other dimensions, etc.

Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Doug. In this video I want to show you how to add data dimensions and how to work with data dimensions in a freeform table in Analysis Workspace. And you’ll see here that I’ve added a freeform table to my project. And you can add as many - freeform tables as you want. You can just go over - here to Visualizations and then drag in freeform tables, and now I’ve got two of them. So you can have as many as - you want in your project. Now dimensions are kind of - your bread and butter here. It’s what you’ll be working - with the most, I think, in your freeform tables 'cause it’s really where all the data is. It’s where all the stuff is that you’re actually reporting on, right? How many pages or which pages, which day, which product names, et cetera, all the different dimensions. And so of course we can see - all of them by saying Show all, and go down and look through those or search through them, et cetera. And then when we find - the one that we want, we can simply drag it over - to our freeform tables. So let’s say I want product names and I can drag that over to one of these, and that will build me my - product name table here. Now it’ll automatically put in occurrences just so we can see some data right away, but you can also then replace occurrences with another metric, - for example, like orders or product views or whatever - makes the most sense again for your products. In this case, maybe we do like orders, and this will allow me to - show you another cool thing which is you can see these drop - zones, these kind of hints. As I go to add things around - here and add this and drop it, it’ll show me either a blue - drop zone or it’ll show me, you can see kind of this orange one here. Now blue means, yeah, that’s a good idea, that’s a normal thing to do. And so for example, I - can add this as a metric and that’ll create another column, or if I don’t really need occurrences, I can also then bring - this over a little bit until it says replace and - I’ll drop that in here. Now as I am dragging - these different dimensions or metrics or segments or - whatever into my table, I might also see kind of an orange one. And if I try to put a - dimension, for example, up here where usually a metric goes, it’s going to say, well, - I’ll let you do that but it doesn’t really make sense, and that’s the orange - color kind of a warning. And so in this case - with another dimension, it makes more sense to - either replace this dimension or to break down these dimension items by this other dimension. And I’ll do that a little - bit more in a second, but I want to first show - you some other things that we can see on here. So when you actually drop in a dimension, you’re going to get some additional information up here at the top. You’ll see that this is page one of four. So I do have a total of - 168 product names here that belong in this report, and I’m showing 50 at a time. You can see that by scrolling down. Anyway you can show more or - less than that if you’d like by selecting that and - choosing a different number per page of product names here. And you can go even right to one of them. So if you want to go right to page four to see the very last few, then you can see that as well. So in any case that’s kind of - some real basic stuff there. And I’ll go back up here to page one so we can see one through 50. Now as I hover over that, you’ll also see this little filter. And so if I click on that, I can do a real quick - search or filter on that. And maybe I do something like - jeans and I can apply that. We’ll see how many jeans items I have. Okay, three. And if I want, I can also click back in, and I can go to advanced here, and I can say, well, - maybe it’s jeans or shirt.
And I can do an or here - with any criteria are met. If I did all criteria are met, then I’d have to have like - jeans, shirt in the same row. But if I do any of them, then I can say give me jeans - or shirts and apply that. So now I’ve got shirts and I’ve got jeans and I’ve got 14 items. And so that’s a way to limit - the items that are in here or these dimensions - that are in your table. Now another way to do that - is to actually go to the page or product name, items, or - whatever kind of items you want by clicking on this right arrow. So since I was working - with product names there, I will do the same thing. And if I really just want this item and, say, this item and - this item and this item, and I want those, I can drag those over to - my table and put those in. So you can limit the items - that are in that dimension either by doing a filter as we saw up here or by selecting specific items that you can drag over into your table. And if I decide that I - wanted to add one more, I can do that as well, and now I have five of them there. Of course being able to - click into the items here not only lets you drag them over but lets you see what’s in there. Because if I decided to search, I’m going to come up here - and search for product, and if I had tried to - drag in products instead, well, what it’d actually get - were these products IDs here, and that’s not really what I wanted. And so you can kind of see what the items are going - to look like in your report just by kind of previewing those. And I can see here product name, and again that was the item - name there that I wanted. So a good way to be able - to preview the items and what’s going to show up in your report by clicking on that right arrow. Now I’m going to go - back up here to the top. I’m going to add another freeform table. Just drag it in there. And this time I’m going - to add this day dimension. Now it’s still a dimension, right? And if I put it in there, it’ll give me the days for my time period which is last 30 days, and this is different - really than my date ranges. Had I dragged in a date range - you can see is purple here, then that would give - me one item in the row which is just that time period. Even if I said this month, it’ll give me just one - line for this month. So that’s more of a range, a single thing, whereas a dimension that - says day or day of week or those kinds of things - will actually break it down by those different items, in - this case, different days. Now if I scroll back down - to what I had before, and I had orders for my product names, and maybe I’ll just add unique - visitors while I’m at it, so we have a couple of metrics in there. I wanted to show you that - you can actually sort your dimensions by - either of these metrics. You can see here I have a down arrow, so this is going to sort by - the highest number first, and I can also switch that. So now it’s sorting by the product name that had the least amount of - orders for that time period, or I can also sort by - unique visitors up or down. And so here’s down of course, the most visitors to this one versus the least amount of visitors to my different products. And I show you that so - I can show you this. When we have a day dimension, for example, you can easily see that by default, it’s going to do a normal - chronological series here, and I can actually - switch that one as well. So in this case, most - recent day and going back. Now if I also decide - that I want to sort this let’s say by the number of orders, I’m going to drag this over and replace occurrences with orders, and I want to say which - day had the most orders, then I can sort that over here. And even though I have - a day dimension here that would normally show - up in chronological order, I’m actually sorting by orders. And so I can see which days - had the most orders on them and of course they’re not in a - row normally chronologically, but which days had the most orders. So that’s kind of helpful. Now I can work again with dimensions, maybe again with the - product name dimension, and I can drag that over here and use it kind of as a filter. You can see that when I get - that into a blue location, it’ll say filter by, and I can - put it above it or below it, it doesn’t really matter - however I want to look at it. But when I just drag over that dimension like product name, and drop it, it’s going to give me the top five here of the different products. Now I can also decide that I - only want some of those here or, for example, if I want to, let me get rid of all those, boom, and I have to get rid of these - other orders, columns here, this is not going to - automatically take those out. Okay, so now I can also - go to a product name and I can select a specific one, and maybe bring this romper over here, and use it as a filter as - well and drop it in there. And now I can see on these days for orders for this winter flannel romper, again how many orders I have - on those different days. And so you can drag in these dimensions and basically use them as - filters over here in a column. That one’s actually very helpful. I think you’ll use that all the time. Now another thing you’ll do all the time, let me scroll down and I - will get back down here to my product name, and that is you’re going to do breakdowns all the time, right? So you can do breakdowns - out of the left rail. So, for example, I can drag - campaign delivery method over to, say, this top one, - and break it down by that, and see that when there were visitors and orders for this shirt, what was the campaign delivery method that brought in those - orders and those people. And this is just demo data. I see that I’ve got some unspecified here that I would need to work on, but maybe it’s unknown. And so in any case, you can see how we break down items there. Now if I get rid of that, you can also multi-select, maybe I’ll grab the top five and I can also do the same thing and just drop it anywhere on those five, and that will break it - down by each of those. Now let me go ahead and - get rid of those again. And I’m going to show you - another breakdown method here, because what that was going to do, in fact I’m going to leave that here because if I choose a - different time period, and I’m sorting here by - these different time periods, and you can see if I sort by orders, it actually brought it down to number 12. If I sort by unique visitors, - then it’s on number 14. So that breakdown was - staying with the item here. Now one of the things you might want to do is not just break things - down by the specific item, but what if I want, say, my top three, I’m going to grab my top three here, and I’m going to go into this little gear and say break down by position. And so if I click on that and then I drag over - campaign delivery method again to my top three, and break that down, and then let’s say I go up - here and change my date, so I’ll change last 30 days - to just a specific day, and we’ll see if we can - get different items.
And as I scroll down here, I - have still my top three, right? And so regardless of which ones those are, because I went in and selected - breakdown by position, even if I select the different - sort like orders here instead of the individual products, then I can get the top - three no matter what. You’ll see that this number three changes when I do that and I click - here and sort by orders, it’s actually robotic toys. And if I sort by unique visitors, then that says gold chain print T-shirts. So in any case, that’s another way to break these down is by position. So just decide if you want - to break it down by position and say always show me the - top three or five or whatever, or if you want to break - down a specific item, then you deselect that, and - it will stick with the item. And the last thing I - want to show you in here with these different dimensions - and these freeform tables is really just the fact - that you can do these tables to show you different kinds of data. So you can do a ranked report which is basically what you’ll see here, any kind of a ranked report - where you have ranked items. In fact, let me go ahead and get rid of some of this data, and we’ll start over again. And I say, well, if I drag - over, for example, my pages, then this is a ranked report - having the ones at the top that have the highest - number of whatevers, right? And so in this case, maybe I will say unique visitors to these pages and I have a ranked report. Another kind of report that we’ve talked about in the - past is an over time report. So if I add another - freeform table up here, an over time report is basically just when you are looking at a - metric over a time period. So like we did before, - I can just drag in day, I can change this to a time - period that has multiple days. Let’s go back to last 30 days again. And now I can see any metric - I want over that time period. So if I want again unique - visitors instead of occurrences, I can replace that and see - the number of unique visitors trended over this time period, but again that’s what we typically - call an over time report. Now another type of - report that we refer to is a trended report, but even though this is - a trend for that metric, again sometimes we call - this an over time report, and typically when we’re - talking about a trended report, we’re talking about trending - an item, trending a dimension. So again if I want to - trend a specific product and maybe this hoodie for example, then I can drag this over - and put it here as a filter, and now I am actually trending my hoodie for unique visitors - over these last 30 days. And so that gives me a trended report. So again these freeform tables are great for trend reports, over time - reports, ranked reports. You can do breakdowns, a lot of good stuff with - the different dimensions. I hope this is helpful. Good luck. -

Topics covered in the video, including times:

  • Basics (0:00)
  • Drop Zone Guides (1:27)
  • Pagination and Filtering (2:45)
  • Add Dimension Items (4:30)
  • Preview Dimension Items (5:15)
  • Time-based Dimensions (5:59)
  • Sorting (6:49)
  • Dimensions as Filters (8:30)
  • Breakdowns (9:48)
  • Ranked, Over Time, and Trended Reports (13:11)
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