1. In Analysis Studio, you can limit the data to the top or bottom values of a set. This helps to keep the data shown in the work area small, even when using large data sources. Let’s focus on the three sales people who generated the least gross profit from mail orders for 2006.

Under Rows, click Staff name to select the set. Click the top or bottom button on the toolbar.

2. We are interested in the bottom three sales people in the analysis. In Analysis Studio, you can also show the sales people who contributed to the top or bottom percentage or who contributed to the top or bottom of a cumulative sum.

Under Top or bottom, click Bottom. (Use the Web browser scrollbar on the right to scroll down.) Under Number of items, click the first box to change the number to 3.

3. When you specify the top or bottom items to show, you may also want to override the default settings. Analysis Studio uses the measure in the home cell (Revenue) and the total column unless you explicitly identify the measure and column to use. Let’s look at the revenue for the bottom three sales people by gross profit in 2006.

Click the arrow next to By measure and then click Gross profit. Click the arrow next to For column and then click 2006. Click OK.

4. You can suppress the zero and missing (or null) values in your data so that only significant data is retrieved. By default, Analysis Studio will suppress both zeros and null values. To change the default, see the suppress options on the Settings menu.

Click the suppress button on the toolbar and then click Apply to Rows only.

5. In Analysis Studio, you can filter the rows and columns that are shown in the work area using any criteria. For example, you want to show the rows only for the bottom three sales staff who sold at least 200 products. Let’s create a new filter.

Under Rows, click the Staff name set. Click the filter button on the toolbar.

6. Let’s define the filter.

In the Filter dialog box, under Item, click Add a filter line. (Use the Web browser scrollbar on the right to scroll down.)

7. When you define a filter, you specify the item and the conditions under which that item interests you. We want to look at the revenue by gross profit for the top three sales people that sold at least 200 items. Because we previously selected mail as the focus of our analysis, these sales people sold at least 200 items by mail.

Click the arrow for the Item box and then click Quantity sold. Click the arrow for the Operator box and then click ≥(greater than and equal).

8. Click the Value box to type 200 (we do it for you). Click the arrow for the For column box and then click 2006. Click OK. (Use the Web browser scrollbar on the right to scroll down.)

9. In Analysis Studio, you can also insert a separate set of related rows or columns, for comparison purposes. For example, we are looking at the bottom sales people for mail orders, and we want to compare the results for Sweden and Netherlands to the bottom performers.

In the Insertable Objects pane, expand the Sales Territory folder, Sales Territory, and Northern Europe. Ctrl+click Sweden and Netherlands and watch as they are dragged to the crosstab.

In this lesson, you learned how to focus on specific items, create a filter, suppress zeros, and compare items from separate sets of data.

Click Welcome in the upper-right corner to return to the list of lessons, or try one of the steps again.