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Analytics > Designing an Analysis > Getting Started with Analytics > About Limitations in Analytics

About Limitations in Analytics

The limitations of reports are listed in the following sections.

Custom Objects Reporting

Analytics provides comprehensive support for reporting custom objects. You can report on Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3 and their many-to-many relationship with accounts, contacts, opportunities, and service requests through specially dedicated subject areas. Use the Advanced Custom Objects subject area to report the relationship between Custom Objects 4-15 and other prebuilt objects including Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3.

Description Text Limits

The Description text fields limit how much text can be printed in a report:

• If the character set uses single-byte characters, the first 2,000 characters appear if the total byte size is less than 4,000.
• If the character set uses multibyte characters, the first 1,000 characters appear if the total byte size is more than 2,000.

Maximum Number of Records

The maximum number of records that can appear is as follows:

• Table view. For this view, the maximum size for an analysis is 500,000 rows (maximum of 10,000 rows displayed at a time). If you attempt to display more than 500,000 rows, then Oracle CRM On Demand displays an error message about exceeding the maximum number of records. When downloading to a CSV file or a tab delimited text file the maximum number of rows that can be downloaded is 500,000. For all other download formats (PDF, PPT, XML, and Excel file or MHTML (Mime HTML), the maximum number of rows that can be downloaded is 65,000.
• Drop-down lists. The maximum number of values that can show in drop-down lists is 1,000. This number includes the drop-down lists in filter conditions and report prompts, dashboard prompts, table view prompts, pivot table view prompts, and graph view prompts.

Time Limit for Query Execution

Analytics provides optimal performance for queries and reports while balancing the performance of Oracle CRM On Demand. To minimize the negative effect of long-running queries or run-away queries on the overall performance of Analytics, a time limit has been enabled for both real-time and historical reports. Queries that exceed the time limit generate a Timeout error message. For information about specific timeout limits that are applicable to your instance of Oracle CRM On Demand, contact Customer Care. For all instances, the maximum query time cannot exceed 10 minutes for Real-Time Reporting subject areas and 180 minutes for Historical Analytics subject areas. For information on optimizing query execution time, see About Report Performance and Optimizing Performance.

Multiselect Picklists

In Historical Analytics subject areas, Analytics displays a multiselect picklist (MSP) field (up to 10 fields for each object) as a separate folder. Within these folders only the first 20 picklist values of the field and the concatenated MSP field value are available for reporting.

Analytics supports the display of the concatenated MSP field values in the company’s default language. Analytics also displays two additional folders:

• Language Independent Code (LIC) folder: This folder exposes the MSP concatenated field values using the language independent codes (LIC) as stored internally in the database. Use these MSP values in filters for optimum performance. LIC folders are named with the object name and suffixed with the word (Code). For example, Account Multi-Select Picklist Fields (Code) and Activity Multi-Select Picklist Fields (Code).
• User Language folder: This folder exposes concatenated MSP field values in the user’s default language. User Language folders are named with the object name and suffixed with the words (User Language). For example, Account Multi-Select Picklist Fields (User Language) and Activity Multi-Select Picklist Fields (User Language).

Multiselect picklist values are supported in the Historical Analytics and Real-time Reporting subject areas for the following objects:

• Account
• Activity
• Approver
• Asset
• Associated Contact
• Associated Opportunity
• Call Activity
• Campaign
• Contact
• Custom Object 01, 02
• End Customer
• Event
• Final Approver
• Household
• Institution
• Invitees
• Last Approved By
• Lead
• Opportunity
• Opportunity Product Revenue
• Owned By User
• Primary Contact
• Product
• Quota
• Quote
• Sample Request
• Service Request
• Shared Address
• Solution
• User
• User Sign In History

Column Filter Prompt in Combined Analyses

Column filter prompts provide general filtering of a column within a request. However, this column filter prompt is not available in combined analysis requests.

Book Visibility

The Book selector appears in the Reports and Dashboard pages and in reports embedded in record Homepages. You can use the Book selector to drill down into user books or custom books. If you have Full Visibility settings and are displaying an Historical Analytics subject area, you can exclude subordinates or subbooks in the respective book hierarchy by clearing the Include Sub-Items check box.

The Book selector is not available for report previews. You cannot exclude sub-items from reports made from Real-time Reporting subject areas. You can clear the Include Sub-Items check box, but it has no effect on Real-time Reporting subject areas, it only affects Historical Analytics subject areas.

NOTE: Several settings control your visibility to records in analytics. For more information, see About Visibility to Records in Analytics.

Exchange Rates

If your company has more than one active currency, your company administrator must set up exchange rates for each currency. Changes made to exchange rates appear in reports after the nightly refresh of analytics data. A single exchange rate is determined for each month, and all transactions within the month use that rate.

Some record types have multiple date fields. Only one date field is used to determine the month's exchange rate. For asset currency conversions, the Purchase Date field determines the month used. For an opportunity, the Opportunity Close Date that is closest to the Exchange Rate Effective Date is used.

Localization Settings

If you change your default language, the reporting elements display in the newly selected language. However, the data in reports or dashboards depends on your company's default language regardless of your chosen language.

Date Support

Analytics supports date analysis of metrics through the date dimension for 41 years (2000 to 2040) for companies using calendar-quarter or standard, fiscal-calendar models. For companies using custom fiscal calendar, Analytics can support date analysis of metrics only for the years defined in Oracle CRM On Demand. If a record is created outside this period, you can still display this record as long as it is not analyzed through the date dimension.

Date dimensions are set up differently in Historical Analytics subject areas than in Real-time Reporting subject areas. In Historical Analytics subject areas there is only one date dimension (standard or canonical), and there might be one or multiple sets of metrics using different dates, so these metrics can be reported by any date within the desire range. In Real-time Reporting subject areas, there are one or multiple date dimensions (role-playing) and only a single set of metrics, so these metrics can be analyzed using different date dimensions.

For example, consider the Opportunity History Analytics subject area, which contains one date dimension (Close Date) and two sets of metrics. The default set of metrics, Opportunity Metrics, is based on the Close Date, but there is also another set of metrics, Opportunity Metrics by Open Date, to allow analysis of opportunities by an open date. However, the Opportunities Real-time Reporting subject area contains two date dimensions: Date Opened and Close Date, and one set of metrics (Opportunity Metrics). The advantage of using the date dimension of the Historical Analytics subject area is that it allows analysis of various related metrics for the entire period using any date within the desire range in a single report.

The following table summarizes the set up of the date dimensions between Historical Analytics and Real-time Reporting subject areas.

Time Support

Dates and times shown in reports are displayed in the company's time zone, so that everyone using the report can view consistent data. It is possible to display dates and times in the user's time zone (for Real-time Reporting subject areas only) if the company administrator has enabled the User Time Zone Support for Reporting Subject Areas field and if this field is selected in the user's profile. Changing this setting affects only reports that you display and does not affect reports that other users display. When sharing reports, the date and time information that you see might be different from the information that others see.

User Quotas

User quotas are available for reporting in the following subject areas: Activities, Activity History, Opportunities, Opportunity History, Opportunity-Products, and Opportunity-Product History. You must be familiar with the following considerations when reporting user quotas:

• User quotas are related to your fiscal calendar definitions. If your fiscal calendar year uses 12 periods starting every July 1, then so does the user quotas. In reports, the user quota year is determined by the final period in the fiscal year. For example, if your fiscal year ends on June 30, 2011, then the user quota year 2011 is from July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.
• If your company changes the fiscal calendar definition, then you must delete and recreate user quotas if the quarterly and yearly roll-up of quota values for users must match the user quotas for Oracle Contact On Demand and Analytics. However, the user quota relation with the fiscal year in Analytics is still based on the year in which the last period of the fiscal year ends.
• User quotas are defined for the quota name, date (month or higher), and user. They are not defined at the opportunity level. If you try to report quota metrics and opportunity metrics with the opportunity dimension field, you might encounter ODBC errors. You might also encounter ODBC errors when the user quota is reported at a level of the dimension object that is lower than the defined level or the available level. For example, user quotas are defined at the month level. If you try to report at the date level, you might encounter an ODBC error.
• User quota metrics are always generated using Manager visibility regardless of the user’s visibility. Hence, it is not possible for users who are not company administrators to report user quotas along with opportunity metrics when their visibility is set to Team visibility.
• You might experience ODBC errors if you report user quota metrics with a nonconforming dimension. For example, user quota metrics are not defined at the opportunity dimension in the Opportunity History subject area, and hence, you might experience ODBC errors if you tried to report user quota and opportunity metrics along with the opportunity dimension fields.
• If you define more than one quota for a given year, the user quota values shown in reports is an aggregation of all quota types for that year. You must use the filter by metric feature if you want the report to show user quota values of selected quota types for that year. For example, if Service Quota and License Quota are two quota types for the fiscal year 2009, and you want only Service Quota to be displayed in reports when reporting opportunity revenue, then use the following filter-metric formula on the user quota value column:

  FILTER("Quota Metric"."QUOTA VALUE" USING (Quota."QUOTA NAME" = 'Service Quota'))

Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3 Associations

You cannot report on the many-to-many associations between Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3 with the following objects in Analytics:

• Activities
• Assets
• Leads
• Products

The many-to-many relationship is implemented only for Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3 and Account, Contact, Service Request, and Opportunity in Analytics. This many-to-many relationship is yet to be implemented between Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3 and Activities, Assets, Leads, and Products. However, customers can report on the one-to-many relationship between these objects and Custom Objects 1, 2, and 3, using the Advanced Custom Objects subject area. You can display elements from the Activities dimension if you include an Activity metric in the report.

Currency Conversion Limits

If a currency value is entered using a currency that is not the company's default currency, then Analytics converts that value to the company's default currency for use in reports. Large values that are acceptable for input in one currency may exceed value limits when converted to the company default currency. When this occurs, the report generation cannot be completed.