Strategy One

Create a Stand-Alone Metric

Beginning in Strategy One (June 2025), the Metric Editor in Workstation has been updated to improve usability, functionality, and performance. It now includes creating base formulas and adding levels, conditions, and transformations to all layers of nested metrics, functions available in MicroStrategy Developer.

You can create and add metrics to a Strategy project to perform calculations on your business data. Metrics represent business measures and key performance indicators. Use these metrics on reports, documents, and dashboards to analyze your data.

To create a metric, you define the metric's formula, which consists of the following:

  • Function: The calculation applied to your business data, such as Sum or Count. Your metric may contain multiple functions.
  • Expression: The business data from your data source. The expression can contain business facts, attributes, or other metrics.

You can create simple metrics such as summing the sales figures or more complex ones that use non-group functions such as running sum, custom expressions such as percent-to-total metrics, levels, filters, and transformations. You can also create nested metrics, which contain multiple layers of functions.

For more background information about metrics, see:

Stand-Alone Vs. Derived Metrics

This topic discusses stand-alone metric objects. You can also create derived metrics within reports, dashboards, and documents. They are not saved as separate objects. See: 

Create a Metric

  1. Open the Workstation window.
  2. From the File menu, select New Metric.
    • To edit an existing metric instead, find the metric and double-click it.
  3. If you are connected to multiple environments or projects, select an environment and project. The Metric Editor dialog box opens.
  4. Click the metric Name, type a new name, and press Enter.

  5. Choose a data type for the metric in the Data Type drop-down list, or leave it as Default.

    • Some data types allow you to format them. For example, if you choose Binary, you can set the Byte Length; if you select Decimal you can set the Precision and Scale. When formatting is available, the More Settings (three dots) icon becomes available. Click it to set the formatting.

  6. Type a Description for the metric.

    You can type the metric formula in the Formula pane or use the Objects pane and the Functions pane for a more guided experience. Steps for each method are provided below.

    Use the guided experience

  7. Click the Functions pane to search for and select a function.

    • To locate a function, type its name in the Search box.

    • You can also browse for a function by selecting a function category (such as Basic Functions or String Functions) from the drop-down list.

    • When you select a function, its description and syntax display at the bottom of the Functions pane.

    • Double-click a function to add it to the Formula pane. When you add a function, its syntax and description display in a pop-up, as shown below. You can copy and paste the parameter syntax (such as <Tiles, Ascending, BreakBy> in the image shown below) into the Formula pane and edit them. Use the example and the Details link displayed at the bottom of the Functions pane for assistance. Some parameters are also automatically filled in when you validate the formula.

  8. Click Objects and use the pane to search for and select the object to use in the expression. The object can be a base formula, which is re-usable metric definition.

    • To locate an object, type its name in the Search box.

    • You can also browse for an object by using the drop-down list and folders.

    • Double-click an object to add it to the Formula pane.

    Type the metric formula

  9. Type the metric formula in the Formula pane on the left. The formula consists of arithmetic operators (+, -, *, and /) and functions such as Average, Rate, and MonthEndDate. The operators and functions are applied to attributes, facts, or metrics. As you type, matching objects, such as functions, attributes, facts, metrics, and base formulas, display in a drop-down list. To add an object to the metric, do one of the following:
    • To add an object from the list, select the object's name.
    • When you select a function, its syntax and description display in a pop-up. You can copy and paste the parameter syntax into the Formula pane and edit them. Use the example and the Details link displayed at the bottom of the Functions pane for assistance. Some parameters are also automatically filled in when you validate the formula.
  10. Continue creating the metric

  11. Click Validate to check the formula and automatically fill in some parameters and the report level. In the example below, information about the level displays between curly braces {}. This indicates that the formula uses the report level with standard filtering and standard aggregation.

  12. You can edit the parameters that have been added. For example, you added the NTile function and the Revenue metric then clicked Validate. The parameters for the number of tiles and whether the values are sorted in ascending or descending order are automatically added, as shown below. You can edit the number of tiles and change Ascending to be false.

  13. If it is not a valid expression, check and repair the formula's syntax.

  14. Click OK to save the formula and enable the other tabs such as Breakdown.

  15. Click Save.

  16. You can further define the metric by adding a level, condition, and/or transformation. Click Breakdown then:
    • To define the attribute level to evaluate the metric at, add a level to the metric. A level metric can calculate regional revenue values, even if the report displays the City attribute. Use the regional metric in a contribution metric to calculate how much each city contributes to total regional revenue.

    • To filter the data included in the metric, add a condition to the metric. For example, a conditional metric calculates revenue for a specific region or time frame.

    • To apply offset values such as "four months ago" to a metric, you add a transformation.

  17. You can format the metric's column headers and values. For steps, see Formatting Metrics.

  18. You can set a variety of options, including selecting the functions that can be used to total the metric on a report, selecting the dynamic aggregation function, specifying joins, and setting VLDB properties such as null checking. For steps, see Applying Metric Options.

  19. Click Save.

Once you have created a metric, you can add the metric to a report, document, or dashboard to analyze your data. For steps, see Create and Edit Reports, Document Authoring, or Create a Blank Dashboard. You also use metrics when creating Create Filters and prompts (see Create and Edit Object Prompts for Reports and Create Value Prompts).

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