Intro

In general, the amount of data you load into your dashboard model, should be as small as possible. Their should be a purpose of every bit of data existing in your Xcelsius / SAP Dashboard Design model. It makes it easier to support and it’s better for the overall performance.

One way of minimizing the amount of loaded data is to set ‘Input values filters’ on a SAP BW Netweaver data connection. It’s quite simple to do this and I won’t explain this in detail now since many resources already described how to do this.

Using filters on key-figures

There is one specific thing I’d like to pay some extra attention to; using ‘input values filters’ on SAP BW query ‘key-figures’ instead of characteristics. If you set up a input filter, you need to bind to the cell that contains the filter value.

What is important here, is that you use the ‘Key’ value instead of the description. The tricky part for ‘key-figures’  is, that they don’t have a ‘key’ value. Does this mean we cannot set a ‘Input  Values Filter’ on key-figures? The answer is no, you can set a filter on  key-figures.

How to do this?

  1. Open up your SAP BW Query Designer and navigate to the key-figure you want to filter on.
  2. Select the key-figure and navigate to  it’s properties.
  3. Navigate to the ‘Extended’ tab.
  4. Copy the ‘Enterprise ID’ value.
  5. Use this value as the ‘key’ value for  the key-figure.

 

Extra freebees:

1. If you want to filter on multiple values, separate the individual filter values by using ;

(dot comma) between every value.

2. The filter value is not case sensitive

 

Alternative route

An alternative route is to get all key figure ‘Enterprise ID’ values by using the ‘Output Values’ section inside the data connection properties.  Select the node under >Characteristics > key-figures > input help > key.

Next, bind to a cell range and all available values will be transferred into the assigned data range.

 

If you have any more questions on this topic, feel free to contact me.