The Measure panel organizes the properties of a measure by common tasks and concepts. It combines all the functions that were formerly on the legacy Measure panel (mostly found on the Info and Controls tab), and the legacy Measure Loader tabs. Everything that was previously on the Dimensions, Field Maps, Filters, and Preview tabs has been changed. The Dimensions, Field maps, and Filters tabs have been removed entirely. This is now done in sources and datapoints, which control dimensionality and how data is harvested when it is loaded, typed in by end users, or generated.

The Link/Unlink Objectives (link objectives to measure) panel was replaced by the Scorecards panel. The Objective Weighting panel is still available as a drill from the Measure panel. You can weigh your measures to objectives and risks using the Objectives panel, depending on if you work top-down or bottom-up.

If any dimensions are configured for dimensional tolerances, you can set them up with the Dimensional Tolerances tab.

To create a new measure:

1. In the Manage tab, click the Measures panel.
2. Click New.

   The New Measure panel opens, as shown in the following image.

   

3. Name your new measure and fill in the fields in the Info tab. The following options are available:

   Units

   The unit of measure used for this measure.

   Owner Id

   The owner ID currently assigned to the measure. You can reassign the measure to a different owner by selecting it from the drop-down menu.

   Description

   An intuitive description of the data loaded into the measure.

   Measure Formula

   A technical description of the measure, such as its datapoints, calculation methods, or source fields.

4. Click the Datapoints tab to link datapoints to the measure, as shown in the following image.

   

   Manually enter or select datapoints to bring in the datapoints that feed this measure. A datapoint can be specified for the Actual field.

   For the Target field, you can:

   • Choose a datapoint for any target (Target, Benchmark, Forecast, or Stretch Target).
   • Define a simple universal numeric target for any target, such as Target, Benchmark, Forecast, or Stretch Target. To do this:
     1. Select the Target check box.
     2. Select the # check box.
     3. Enter the target, as shown in the following image.

        

5. Click Save.

By default, all measures are ascending, have preset tolerances, and have a default display format. All of these settings can be changed in the Controls tab.

1. In the Manage tab, click Measures.
2. Select the measure you want to change.

   The Edit Measure panel opens.

3. Click the Controls tab, as shown in the following image.

   

   The following options are available:

   Aggregation Method

   A method you can use when aggregating this measure. Choose from Additive, Percentage, Change in Percentage, or Ratio.

   Direction

   Direction to be used to determine how thresholding is performed. The options are:

   • Ascending - Higher is better
   • Descending - Lower is better
   • Range - Should fall within range

   For more information about these options, see Indicator Concepts.

   Threshold/Flex Type

   The type of value used in the Threshold/Flex fields. The options are Percent or Units.

   Threshold/Flex

   The first field indicates the value used for the threshold, which determines the outer range when an indicator shows red.

   The second field indicates the value used to determine the inner edge of the yellow zone. Setting a flex of 0 indicates that the measure does not allow any deviation from the target.

   Threshold/FlexSlider

   Displays a grid that enables you to graphically adjust the threshold and flex values.

   Display Format

   A WebFOCUS numeric display format valid for the unit of measure. Valid format types are:

   • D (floating-point double-precision),
   • F (floating-point single-precision),
   • I (integer)
   • P (packed decimal)

   The formats are In, Dn.d, Fn.d, and Pn.d, where n represents the maximum number of digits to display, and .d, an optional decimal point with the number of digits to display after it.

   The maximum number you can code before and after the decimal point is 10 for I, 15 for D, 7 for F, and 31 for P. You can also add at the end, in any order:

   • M or % to format the number as currency or as a percent
   • C to suppress commas

   Many other codes can also be used. For more information about numeric display options, see the ACTUAL value options section in the Describing Data With WebFOCUS Language manual.

   Access Security

   Enable this option to filter data using access security at the security level of the user.

   Time Summary

   This option varies how measured data is aggregated over time.

   Select Standard to aggregate using standard Time rules. All of the measure data shown at higher time levels adds up to the total of all data at the lowest loaded level (for linear aggregation) and includes all percent or ratio data over the entire time period (for percent, ratio, and change in percent aggregation). This option is the default.

   Select Average to show an average value, which calculates a mean average of all the data loaded across the lower Time levels for the duration of the higher level period.

   Select Most Recent to show the latest values. Only the most recently loaded value of all the data loaded across the lower Time levels for the duration of the higher level period will be shown.

   Note: These options will only be available if the Alternate Time Summary setting in the Summarization settings is enabled.

4. Click Save.

You can make an exact copy of any existing measure. After making the copy, you can immediately alter it as needed. To copy a measure:

1. From the Manage tab, click the Measures panel button.
2. Select the measure you want to copy. The Edit Measure panel opens.
3. Click Save As. You will be prompted for a new name for the measure, as shown in the following image.

   

4. Click Save. PMF will make an exact copy of the measure. You can edit and save your changes at any time, and click Save As again if you want to make more copies. This measure is what will be loaded for editing.

All loaded data from any loadable source can be wiped out or deleted in a single operation. This is useful when you have loaded data that is invalid. It is a simple way to delete all the data.

1. From the Manage tab, click the Measures panel button.
2. Select the measure that needs data to be deleted. The Edit Measures panel opens.
3. Click the Wipe Data button. PMF will ask you to confirm the data purge.
4. Click OK.

Note: It may take PMF a moment to purge all of the data.

To configure external measures to be read into PMF, you must first activate the feature:

1. From the Manage tab, click the Settings panel button.
2. Click Summarization.
3. From the External Aggregation drop-down menu, select Y.
4. Enter the name of the master file for the external DB where you are storing the pre-aggregated data in the External Aggregation MFD box.
5. Click Save.
6. Configure each measure that will use External Aggregation. From the Author or Manage tab, click the Measures panel button.
7. Select a measure.
8. Click the Controls tab.
9. From the Alternate Processing drop-down menu, select External.
10. In the External Dimension links box, enter the letter that represents each dimension to which the external measure data links.

Tip: To get the letter that represents each dimension, click the Dimensions panel button and click the Advanced tab. The dimension letter will be shown next to Dimension Type.

You can control the content visible from the drill for each Metric in PMF using the Content tab on the Measure panel. Any Content managed within PMF can be added to the menus.

There are two menus at the Metric level. These options control the drill menu that is activated when you click:

• The name of a Metric on any Grid or chart.
• The data values displayed for a Metric on any Grid or chart.

The Dimensions tab has been removed from the Measures panel. In PMF 5.3.2, measures get their dimensionality from the datapoints that are linked. PMF uses dimensions in the most efficient way possible, and with the most flexibility, by always choosing the lowest common level for dimensional linkages.

Prior to PMF 5.3.2, you either had a load or a user entry option for measures. For each measure, you had to separately define dimensionality. Most data marts had very similar dimensionality for all their measures that usually depended on where the data was coming from. This meant a lot of time was spent defining separate dimensional structure for every measure, when actually, most users were simply repeating steps.

As detailed in The Core Paradigm, PMF 5.3.2 gives you the ability to model your measures with consistent dimensionality by figuring out the dimensionality you put into your datapoints. It then uses the most complete (lowest possible) level of aggregation for all the linked-up datapoints, to provide the most detail possible.

The datapoints linked to your measures can have a complex, multi-part lineage, depending on their relationship to other derived datapoints and to loadable, user-entered, or in some cases, generated, datapoints.

The PMF design allows any derivations to be calculated in the correct order. The PMF model allows it to discover the generations of data lineage and to navigate in memory backwards and forwards through this lineage. PMF always uses the correct order to calculate the components for your measures. The process of copying the final state of all data is handled automatically once the recalculation of all points in the middle are completed.

You can view lineage for the datapoints of any measure. The Lineage tab shows the progress of data through PMF, from the external data harvested into datapoints, through any derived datapoints, and all terminal points in your measure.

The following image shows an example of the Lineage tab for a measure.

The lineage tab automatically displays the entire lineage. You can click the Collapse All button to hide the entire lineage.

PMF keeps track of each load that is executed for each measure in the system, regardless of whether you loaded it manually or the load was called by the scheduler. This data is stored in a special logging section of the PMF data mart.

The History tab for a measure displays the history of all loads that have been logged.

The history of the measure shows:

• The dates that the loads ran.
• The count of rows that were retrieved, inserted, updated, and deleted.
• The count of total mismatches that occurred between the source data and the PMF metrics mart. Mismatches are source data rows that do not match to any existing keys for one or more dimensions.
• The count of gaps in data continuity, which indicate the sparsity of the data. This does not mean there are errors but, if paired with mismatches, can help you debug any unexpected data discontinuities.
• Any messages returned from the load system. If there is an error, the exact error is displayed in the information shown in this tab.