In the current version, Analysis for Office allows you to build custom hierarchies within the front-end interface of the tool to display members listed under a node interactively.

In addition to using pre-defined hierarchies from the back end, you can also group members together as a hierarchical presentation locally if a dimension is displayed with a flat presentation without any kind of a hierarchical relationship. You can then convert them back to discrete individual entities again by ungrouping them. Ungrouping can be done either any single node individually or the entire hierarchy that is built locally.

Prerequisites

• You can group the members of dimensions that are stored in an SAP BW system with version 7.50 SP6 or higher
• Members in HANA data sources cannot be grouped
• The dimension for which the hierarchy needs to be created, should have the Hierarchy option enabled in the BW system (using transaction RSD1), which is explained below

For this demo, a hierarchy is created on Oil Product Group (P_PRODUCT) dimension.

You can go by the following steps to check/enable hierarchies using t-code RSD1.

1. Enter the technical name of Oil product group for Info Object.

2. Display the hierarchy type properties and enable it.

Grouping

 
1. Consume the corresponding data source onto Analysis for Office.
2. Select one or more members of a dimension in the crosstab, as shown below.

3. Click on Hierarchy -> Group members

The Group Header dialog appears.

4. Enter a name for the new node in Group Header field.

The name will be the header for the grouped members.

5. Click OK

You have created a new hierarchy.

This new custom hierarchy behaves like the pre-defined ones coming in from the backend. You can build as well as group several nodes to the available higher nodes in the hierarchical relationship.

To ungroup a single node, select the node and choose Hierarchy -> Ungroup Members.

The created node is deleted and the former display is re-established.

To ungroup your complete custom hierarchies, select one element of the dimension and choose Hierarchy -> Ungroup All.

The dimension will be reverted to its default flat presentation.

This hierarchy is listed under the hierarchy nodes for the corresponding dimension in the Analysis tab of the Design Panel as it is done for predefined hierarchies. Moreover, this hierarchy behaves like the ones which are defined in the backend.

So, the Local hierarchies can be used in any kind of business case where we consume hierarchies from the backend to display the data members linked with a hierarchical relationship.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.