Explore Your Data

You can start creating a story for your data by experimenting with filters and charts in the Explorer.

In the Explorer, you see a faceted view of your data, which you can manipulate to generate charts for your story pages. When you select measures and dimensions in the upper pane, the visualization in the lower pane updates in real time. You can filter dimensions by selecting individual members, and the visualization changes immediately to show you the filtered result.

Initially, the visualization type is chosen automatically based on the selected data, but you can change it to any of the types supported for your data. When using the Table visualization, the behavior is the same as when using tables in stories, with the following exceptions. For more information about tables, see Use Tables to Visualize Data.

  • Some actions specific to tables in planning models are not supported in the Explorer; for example, allocation, version management, and forecasting.

In addition to this Data Exploration mode, you can also use the Data Manipulation mode, which lets you perform simple data preparation, such as specifying which column is a measure and which is a dimension.

Note
The Data Manipulation mode is available only when you acquire data by dragging an Excel file onto the Home screen, or by selecting Add New Data from the menu under the Story/Data switch, and then selecting Data uploaded from a file.

Required Dimensions

Some dimensions may be required for displaying measure values. To ensure that displayed numbers are correct, select all the Required Dimensions in the facet panel in the Explorer. The (Show/Hide Data) list displays required dimensions based on which measures are selected in the Explorer.

Also, when using the Show Measure feature in the Explorer, a measure is disabled if the measure has more than one required dimension, or if the selected dimension is not the measure’s required dimension.