edX - DAT206x - Module 7 - Lecture Notes

- Visualizing Data in Excel

Additional information:
- More on hierarchies in the Excel Data Model:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Hierarchies-in-Power-Pivot-
002cf883-3b5f-497c-bfa1-ab2271cdb73b

- Visualizing
- Can create Pivot Charts without Pivot Tables (new feature 2013)
- For visual cleanliness, consider turning off spreadsheet features like
gridlines in dashboards
- Also consider hiding tables so they don't clutter the Pivot field selection
window
-

- Slicers
- If you create a slicer in one pivotchart, you have to go to options for
slicer, then Report Connections and
then select other charts if you want to tie it to other charts
- Argues for naming charts so you can see non-default names in this
selector
- May show more options than there is data (greyed out) but you can also hide
these excess options
- Can be connected to Pivot Charts and Pivot Tables on other worksheets

- Data hierarchies
- Can be defined in Data Model
- Hierarchy:
- Collection of fields (e.g. Year, Month, Day) that go together
- If there's a specific drilldown path for any task or analysis that is
repetitive, consider a hierarchy

- Customizing Pivot Tables

- Connect existing slicer to Pivot Table:
- Either
- Edit Connections in Slicer options
OR
- In Analyze button for Table, use Filter Connections

- Cube Functions
- Create Pivot Table
- From Analyze ribbon within Pivot Table, in Calculation chunk, use OLAP
Tools -> Convert to Formulas
- This changes the Pivot Table so that each cell is now a cube function
- Slicer is still connected to these formulas
- CUBESET function starts with Connection
- Then you can drill down through data model with autofill
- .children function can be inserted manually
- This is an MDX function
- MDX is the syntax/language of OLAP data cubes
- Cell with CUBESET function now contains data which you can reference
with CUBERANKEDMEMBER and CUBEMEMBER functions
- CUBEVALUE can reference context values (you specify cell locations)
and slicers (by name)
- Far more flexible in terms of cell locations and narrowed behavior
than Pivot Tables
 - You should understand MDX to help understand how this feature set
works
- Also can integrate data from multiple tables into a single report

Cube-based charting:
- Treemap and Sunburst charts available only in 2016
- Show results based on area/value