1. Administering FreeForm
  2. Editing Dimensions in the Simplified Dimension Editor
  3. Working with Attributes
  4. Working with UDAs

Working with 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 by UDA; for example, UDA(New Products).

  • You can use the HSP_UDF UDA to prevent a formula from being overwritten when the application is refreshed. You must log on to each database associated with the business process and create the member formula with a UDA. The syntax for this UDA is: (UDAs: HSP_UDF).

  • If you use the @XREF function to look up a data value in another database to calculate a value from the current database, you can add the HSP_NOLINK UDA to members to prevent the @XREF function from being created on all cubes that are not the source cube selected for that member.

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 work with UDAs in the Edit Member Properties grid:

  1. From the Home page, click Application, click Overview, and then click Dimensions.
  2. Click on the name of the dimension for whose members to associate the UDA.
  3. Select the Edit Member Properties tab.
  4. On the dimension grid, right-click any column heading, select UDA, and then click OK to make the UDA column visible in the grid.
  5. Locate the member to add the UDA, and then scroll to the UDA column.
  6. Click in the UDA cell to display the UDA management dialog.
  7. Select a task:

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

      Note:

      Use no more than 60 characters when naming UDAs.

    • 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 the 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 icon.

  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.