Track Changes In A Measure For A Period-To-Date - IBM Cognos User Manual

Track Changes in a Measure for a Period-to-Date

Businesses often need to track changes in a measure for a specific period to-date.
You can use relative time categories to enable your OLAP report users to analyze
growth trends for a full range of to-date time periods.
For example, suppose your users want to gauge current sales revenues in light of
previous performance. You set up the current period for your model to
automatically use the most recent date values available after each data update.
Then, you set up the following relative time categories: Current Month, Quarter
To-Date, Year To-Date, Year To-Date, and Life To-Date.
Procedure
1. Open the Categories diagram for the time dimension and position the pointer
2. Drag the pointer to the right of the root category.
3. In the Category code box, type a name for the new category.
4. Click the Relative Time tab.
5. In the Relative time box, select the relative time period that represents the
82
IBM Cognos Transformer Version 10.1.1: User Guide
Last Month
v
Last Quarter
v
Last Year
v
v Same Month, Prior Quarter
Same Month, Prior Year
v
Note: Select Custom if you want to override any of the default selections on
the Relative Time tab. For example, you can specify the basic approach, a
different target time period for your new category, a new context in which the
period will be reported, and the corresponding offsets, to track values that
apply to a period other than the current one.
For more information about specifying custom time periods, see "Track
Changes in a Measure over Several Time Periods" on page 83 and "Track
Changes in a Measure in Future Time Periods" on page 84.
over the right side of the root category.
The pointer changes to a crosshair.
A new relative time category is created and its property sheet opens.
to-date period for which you want to create a relative time category and click
OK.
For a Year-Quarter-Month dimension, the available to-date categories list
includes the following:
Quarter To-Date
v
Year To-Date
v
Life To-Date
v
Quarter To-Date Grouped
v
Year To-Date Grouped
v
Quarter To-Date, Prior Quarter
v
Year To-Date, Prior Year
v
Note: Select Custom if you want to override any of the default selections on
the Relative Time tab. For example, you can specify the basic approach, a
different target time period for your new category, a new context in which the