What If Analysis in Design Studio

[Former Member]

When looking at certain types of dashboards or reports one of the features we come across is the ability to create What If scenario's e.g. What If the Price increased by 10%, how would this effect Revenue? In Design Studio there is no documented process or standard feature that I have come across as yet (please leave me a comment if i've missed it), however I was reading Xavier Hacking's blog and came across the article on using BEx conditions in Design Studio to display Top N results (well worth reading). It didn't take too much of a leap to figure out that this process could be quite easily applied to create dynamic formulas that can be used within DS.

So similar to the process Xavier details:

1) Create a new BEx Key Figure Formula:

2) Create a new Variable, then select it and edit it.

3) Now fill in the details for a Manual Input/Default Value variable - you can also add a Default Value in on the required tab

4) Now add your variable to the formula. In this instance I'm just adding the variable but you would add it to a calculation such as Price * variable

5) Open DS, create a crosstab and then add an Inputfield.You will see the Input Variable key figure states NOT_EXIST unless you have defined a default value

6) Open the On Change event and add the following:

APPLICATION.setVariableValueExt("Variable Tech Name",

INPUTFIELD_1.getValue());

7) View your application, enter a value and press enter, your value should now show in the Input Variable field (or whatever you have named it)

Hope that has been helpful. There are lots of possibilities that can stem from this, have fun playing around with it. Try investigating what else you can do in the on change event.

Thanks

David Allison

Twitter: David__Allison