Visualisation - Link Dimensions between two models

[Former Member]

Hello everyone,

today I tried to further study the modeling functionality of SAP C4A.

Meanwhile I generated some detailed models with relevant financial data from an SAP ERP system.

Now I wanted to combine some of these models over the "Link Dimensions" functionality and ran into a problem through the visualisation within a story.

I started small and created the following two data models with simple values. The ID's and the description are identical, but the values (key figures/signed data) are different to see the impact.

Model 1:

ID	Description	Value
1	Text 1	10
2	Text 2	20
3	Text 3	30
4	Text 4	40
...	...	...

Model 2:

ID	Description	Value
1	Text 1	1000
2	Text 2	2000
3	Text 3	3000
4	Text 4	4000
...	...	...

I imported this model and the data successfully into C4A and created afterwards a new story.

Within this story I added both of them and linked the ID dimensions over the "Link dimensions" Button.

As you can see in the image above I was able to set the ID dimension successfully.

After this step I tried to create a new chart with the values (signed data) from both of these models through the generated link like it is described in the userguide.

In the following image you can see that the system tells me the following errormessage:

"Unable to retrieve data from the server. Error: [Cannot read property 'type' of null]

I understand this function like a Join between two "tables" where I need a key which has to match in both models (which it does in this data setup).

In this case I do not know why the system is not able to create a chart. I tried every available chart-type and none of them worked in this simple scenario.

Have I misunderstood something or did I do something wrong?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Best regards,

David

[JohnL]

HI David,

Can you share your full model with us? Is this model and data based on a remote system or does the data and model reside inside Cloud for Analytics ?

Thanks,

[Former Member]

Hello John,

meanwhile this simple example and the link between the models works.

It seems like there was a bug, which got fixed. I didn't change anything and since several days it works like it should.

This is the correct result I got:

I do not use any kind of remote system. All the data are uploaded via CSV manually into C4A.

As I described above, this was a very simple example. The functionality of linking models together to use the data within one visualisation is very important for our use cases. So I tried to build a more detailed example.

But in this example the system always presents one of the two used key figrues as the overall sum of the values instead of the correct single values.

Here you can see the two different visualisation of the two used models.

I cannot share more details, because it is company data, but in general each model has 10 data records and a key which is the customer number. The keys match and are identical. Every record in the first model has excat one matching record in the second model.

So basically a very simple situation.

The only difference to the first example is, that here I use two different Account dimensions.

In the first example I used the same Account dimension with the only keyfigure called "value". You can see this in the pictures of the first blog entry.

And the following image reprents the result which I got. I used the link dimensions as described in the user guide but as you can see "Herstellkosten fix" has always the same value (the sum of all datarecords of this type).

Are you familiar with this problem? Could it be a bug or is there anything I did wrong?

We need to fix this problem asap.

Another question:

I always have to include at least one of the linked dimension into my visualisation to show key figures from different models together. But in this case I do not have the possibility to aggregate the values furthermore. Is there any way to include the linked dimension, but to hide it, so I can aggregate? The link dimension is our cases a granular dimension and this would be a limitation.

Thanks a lot and best regards,

David

[JohnL]

Hi David,

The linking of models only works when the the account dimension / key figures are different.

If they are the same then the values will aggregate.

Here is a sample model:

HR model:

HR_ACCOUNT

REGION

Operating Income (OpInc) model:

ACCOUNT

REGION

Link the REGION dimensions:

Base Annual Salary is coming from the HR model and Gross Profit is coming from the OpInc model.

If the Base Annual Salary account (measure) also exists in the OpInc model, then you would probably see the same aggregation occurring.

Did you add any filters to your chart? Can you see if they are getting applied correctly?

Thanks,