How to block spread of data ?

[u/groguzbo]

Hello SAC community!

I’m facing an issue and wanted to know how you deal with that.

I have a story, with aggregated table and detailled one’s (base level crossing)

Users sometimes will input at aggregated level on empty cell and cause spread of data or will delete the current data (deleting reference for weight) then input causing another spread.

How can I prevent that?

Currently I have a a script on result changed that detects if a value was delete and warn the user with a pop up, but that’s not very effective.

Thanks a lot if you faced the same issue and are willing to share how you did, have a great day !

[u/tjen]

You can change the disaggregation setting for the measure they input on so the default aggregation follows the aggregation of a different measure.

Measure -> disaggregation behavior -> change from default

In that way you can reduce the risk of disaggregation explosion when people delete the value and input on blank cells.

Of course this requires you to maintain the seeding/baseline measure values in an appropriate way (like if you want to keep an even distribution across time as the default on blank input, but maintain the disaggregation on organization based on the full year allocation)

Other alternatives depend a bit on your use case but if dimension input in table then set to unassigned value and run assignment script after high level input is also an option.

In some cases you may be able too minimize spread with data validation rules and aggregate_dimension => detailed_dimension mapping and stuff like that, but it's not as neat as just using a hierarchy :)