What is a Dimension
Dimensions are essentially "tags" or added information associated with a line item.
Below are line items for employees with their associated monthly costs.
One use-case for a Dimension here is categorizing these employees by their department. Doing so will aid in later analysis of per-department employee expenses.
We can accomplish this goal by creating a new Text dimension named "Department".
This is the same line item, with an added Dimension of Department and tags for each Employee into the "PD" department.
Below is a more complex example where Dimensions have been created to track multiple factors of Employees.
Creating Dimensions a core concept in Basis. It's the foundation on which you can then:
Create views (see Grouping & Filtering)
Create aggregate financial metrics (see Rollups & Magic Metrics)
Dimension Types
There are different types of dimensions.
Text - This single-select text field can be used to categorize data further. For example, a text dimension named Department allows you to categorize Expenses by the department they are in.
Number - The number field is a field type designed to hold numbers. For example, a number dimension named Term Months enables you to categorize Contracts by the contract term in months.
Currency - A currency field is a specific type of number field that formats the number as a currency amount. A Value currency dimension allows you to tag Contracts by their contract value.
Percent - The percent field type is a field type designed to hold numerical values formatted as percentages. The values in a percent field are all represented as fractions of 100 with the percent sign; e.g. the number .75 in a percent field is represented as 75%.
Date - A date field allows you to easily enter a date into a cell, such as Start Date or End Date. When editing a date time, you will be presented with a calendar widget that makes it easy to select a specific date
Boolean - A checkbox field is useful for true/false values within a record.
Managing Dimensions
Adding Dimensions
Select the Dimensions option on the Block toolbar.
Then select Add Dimension and pick from a myriad of options
The interactive dimension will be added to your Block and is immediately usable
Pinning and Hiding Dimensions
Sometimes a table has too many Dimensions or we wish to hide them for one reason or another to focus on time-series data.
In these cases, we have various options to move Dimensions out of the way.
Toggle hiding Dimensions
Within the Dimensions toolbar option, we can toggle hiding or showing one or more dimensions. Your model is unaffected while the dimensions are hidden.
Pinning and unpinning
Dimensions are pinned by default but this can become unmanageable when we have too many dimensions we wish to manage at once on a Block (not recommended).
Here we can unpin all of our dimensions. Scrolling to the left of the table we can see all of our dimensions to manage.
Quick toggle showing dimensions
We can quickly toggle showing or hiding dimensions using the Quick Toggle option.
Dimensions in a Template Block
Basis makes Template Blocks for you to quickly spin up models. Template Blocks have their own system Dimensions.
Here in the Employees template, if you update the template Dimension for Annual Pay, this automatically updates monthly employee costs to the right. That is because, in this Employees Template Block, our system built additional logic into these dimensions. This custom logic is picked up by Basis Rollups and Magic Metrics.
