1787945 - SAP Visual Intelligence: How to create a Time Hierarchy if the option is grayed out?

• A Time Hierarchy is required but the option "create a Time Hierarchy" is grayed out

• Visual Intelligence 1.0 SP06

1. Acquire data from a Universe, or HANA offline
2. Identify a date column which is mapped as a character field

• The column is qualified as a character string, not a numeric field.

1.  First convert the character to number

2. Change the numerical display format on the generated column (optional):

3. It is now possible to create a time hierarchy - the option is enabled:

4.  In the hierarchy editor, now qualify the relationships between objects:

5.  The smart dimension is now created for the Time Hierarchy:

For more complex scenarios where several columns (Year, Month, Day) need converting into a single Date field, the above approach has a side effect of creating multiple redundant columns. This can confuse users, and also adds a processing overhead.

1. Advanced users may find the formula-builder more efficient, by: a) performing the 3 data-type conversions, and, b) combine the date-parts into a single date column ... in one step.
2. Consider this column 'DAY':

3. This can be transformed using the syntax:  MakeDate(ToNumber(SubString(DAY,1,4)), ToNumber(SubString(DAY,5,2)), ToNumber(SubString(DAY,7,2))

gray grey greyed hidden not accessible selectable , KBA , BI-LUM-DIS , Lumira Desktop/Discovery , How To