1. Administering and Working with Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management
  2. Creating and Managing Applications
  3. Managing Applications
  4. Managing Dimensions
  5. Working with Attributes
  6. Working with User-Defined Attributes (UDAs)

Working with User-Defined Attributes (UDAs)

You can use user-defined attributes (UDAs), descriptive words or phrases, within calc scripts, member formulas, reports, and forms. UDAs return lists of members associated with the UDA.

For example:

  • For a Product dimension with several product members, you can create a UDA called New Products and assign this UDA to the new products in the Product dimension hierarchy. Then you can base certain calculations on the designation New Products.

  • When designing forms, you can use a UDA to select members for forms based on a common attribute. When you create forms with UDAs, any members that are assigned to the UDA are dynamically added to the form. For example, if you create a UDA called New Products and assign this UDA to the new products in the Product dimension hierarchy, the form will automatically display the new products at runtime. When selected in the form designer, a UDA is preceded byUDA; for example, UDA(New Products).

UDAs are specific to dimensions. For example, creating a UDA for an Account member makes it available for non-shared Account members. Deleting it removes it for all Account members. To make UDAs available for multiple dimensions, create the same UDA for multiple dimensions. For example, create a UDA named New for Account and Entity dimensions to make the UDA named New available for Account and Entity members.

To create or edit UDAs:

  1. From the Home page, select Application, and then Overview.

  2. On the Application page, select the Dimensions tab.

  3. Select a cube, and then click the name of the dimension for whose members you want to associate the UDA.

  4. On the dimension grid, right-click any column heading, and then clear the Default Mode option to make the UDA column visible.

  5. In the grid, select the member to associate with the UDA, and then scroll to the right until you see the UDA column.

  6. Click in cell in the UDA column to display the UDA dialog box.

  7. Select a task:

    • To create a UDA, click Add icon, enter a name, and then click Save.

    • To modify a UDA, select the UDA, click Edit icon, change the name, and then click Save.

    • To delete a UDA, select the UDA, click Delete icon, and then confirm deletion.

      Note: Deleting a UDA removes it for the whole dimension. If you delete UDAs, you must update all member formulas, calc scripts, and reports that reference them.

    • To clear UDA selections, click Clear button.

  8. To add or remove UDAs for the member, use the arrows to move UDAs to and from the Selected UDA panel.

  9. Click OK.