Advanced Analysis has been designed as a paperless exception reporting system that managers will use regularly to monitor the many different aspects of their business.
Each Advanced Analysis topic in AUTOLINE has been designed to cover a particular aspect of your core business. Each Advanced Analysis is a powerful tool and the information it presents can be tailored to suit an individual's personal requirements.
The following section will explain how to use Advanced Analysis in its simplest form right up to its fullest potential when all its features are used.
Advanced Analysis works hierarchically. From the top level of hierarchy it is possible to Drill Down through the different levels of Analysis. At any level the view can be Rotated, hence displaying an alternative breakdown.
Drill Down and Rotation are principles that are explained more fully in this on-line help.
Advanced Analysis works by feeding on raw data, converting that data into formal analysis files, then generating drill-down structures to view like management accounts. The raw data can be generated under program control, or can be created by the Report Generator.
An example of an Advanced Analysis topic can be the traditional invoice sales analysis, or more diverse, like analysing the age of debt in your sales ledger. Each topic can be analysed in several different ways over several years.
Budgets and forecasts can also be created for comparison to actuals.
When you open an Advanced Analysis, in View Advanced Analysis, what you will see will be driven by the priority level of your password. The System Manager controls the level of access for each password, thus determining the security for each topic. (See Drill down visibility.)
The drill in Advanced Analysis is controlled by mouse clicks.
By double clicking on a table it will drill down a level.
A single right click drills up a level.
Double clicking on a figure will offer you a second value and then produce a comparison graph between the two chosen figures.
The opening display includes whatever you have chosen to be included in the default display of that Topic's Profile.
The simplest way to control the Advanced Analysis output is with your Mouse.
Click on any figure that you wish to see broken down into greater detail, that is, to produce a graph.
Alternatively, click on the label that you wish to drill down into.
When an axis drill levels have been exhausted the drill will Rotate. See Rotation.
Once the Advanced Analysis has been rotated then these figures can be drilled down into, it is not possible to drill further on this axis.
When at the bottom of both axes (in other words it is not possible to drill further in X or Y), if the Advanced Analysis has an Overlay attached to it then the next click on the mouse will execute that overlay. For example, this could allow you access an individual table record or, in the case of an invoice transaction, a copy of the associated document.
A topic is the generic term used to describe the Advanced Analysis of a specific area. A topic is made up of Profiles. Each Profile has a different view of the same data.
When creating a topic, decide which data elements you wish to display inside the Topic and how many profiles/views are required of the same data. In creating several Profiles for a Topic, the same data can be viewed in different ways. Each Advanced Analysis Topic can have up to eight profiles.
The steps in the drill-down of an Advanced Analysis are defined within one of the 2 axes therefore allowing for alternative definitions of 'break down'.
Each axis can provide up to 6 levels of break-down.
Example:
Parts stock in a large group could be analysed by Franchise at the first (top) level, at level 2 within Franchise by Branch, and at level 3 within Franchise and Branch by Product group.
Providing a second axis (Y-axis) allows you to Rotate the view at any stage to display an alternative breakdown.
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e.g. |
X.0 Franchise |
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=>Branch |
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=>Product group |
ROTATED BY
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Y.0 Age |
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=>Price |
An axis (X and Y) consists of between one and six data elements, each one a separate descending level.
See Profiles
Note: The total bytes of all the data elements/raw fields in any particular axis must not exceed 16.
Example:
A company is split into the product types it sells and inside each product type there are the suppliers of that product type.
Therefore it could be said that a Product Supplier is a subgroup of a product type, and a product type is a subgroup of a Company
Each data element/raw field has a label which gives it its description.
Each Advanced Analysis has its own data dictionary, the data element/raw fields that make a profile are selected from this data dictionary.
The data dictionary is updated with information by a unique Report Generator Update report that is run from within a module's Report Generator.
In an axis, the top level (in other words the normal opening level) would be Y.0 and this is invariably going to be the name of the Company.
The next level down the hierarchy is Y.1 and this level can only be accessed by clicking or returning through a Y.0 field. If there is a third data level, then Y.2 follows, and this can only be accessed by clicking or returning through a Y.1 field. This is the procedure for drilling down through a figure.
At any stage you may Rotate the Advanced Analysis, and the X and Y axis will swap places, and the X-axis raw field titles will replace the Y-axis raw field titles.
Rotate: Click on the Rotate button to rotate the data.
A Rotation causes purely a display change to the present data, it changes nothing else.
Hence the Totals will never change in Rotation, just the breakdown and titles against the figures.