Adding consolidations and custom groups

A consolidation is a set of attribute elements grouped in a way that they were not originally grouped within the project, so that you can use the consolidation (the newly consolidated elements) just like a regular attribute on a report. For example, you might group the Month elements into December, January, and February and call the consolidation Winter; then you group March, April, and May into a consolidation called Spring; and so on. These names appear on the resulting report.

When you create a consolidation, you do not change your organization's data source definitions or the MicroStrategy metadata definitions. Consolidations allow users to filter a report on a row-by-row basis.

A custom group is a group of filters that bring back from your data source a specifically defined set of attribute elements to be displayed on the report. Custom groups allow you to group and display attribute elements in a way that is not defined in your data source. For example, you might create filters to bring back data that is displayed as Top 5 Customers, Top 5 Employees and Top 5 Items on the same report.

The table below compares consolidations and custom groups.

	Consolidation	Custom Group
Example	Grouping specific months into seasons, and displaying the seasons on a report.	Displaying Top 5 Customers, Top 5 Employees, and Top 5 Items on one report.
Structure	Groups of attribute elements (such as January, February, and so on).	Groups of filters (such as top 5 revenue-producing customers, top 5 revenue-producing employees, and so on).
How it works	Creates a virtual attribute to allow reporting on an attribute that does not exist in the data model.	Applies different filters to different rows of a report.

The following table outlines other differences between custom groups and consolidations.

Feature or Action	Consolidation	Custom Group
Arithmetic operations (row level math)	Yes, this can be done.	No, this cannot be done.
Site of final calculation	MicroStrategy Analytical Engine.	Your data source.
SQL efficiency	High.	Low. One pass for each custom group element.
Recursive definition	Yes.	No.
Display mode	Fixed at element level only.	Flexible and expandable.
Subtotals	No.	Yes.

For details on these differences, as well as business examples and steps to create consolidations and custom groups, see the Consolidations and Custom Groups chapter of the Advanced Reporting Help.