Reference Fact Sheets for views on reports

Views on reports for fields on relations and fields of related Fact Sheets now support choosing a reference Fact Sheet to apply the color coding. This feature was available only on diagrams before and is now included in reports.

Since this feature is a bit more complex and challenging to understand, it needs a longer explanation and example.

Besides views of fields and tags on the Fact Sheet itself, reports also support selecting views for fields on relations and fields of related Fact Sheets. But the report's Fact Sheets can have multiple relations of such a selected view.

For example, on an Application Matrix with the view 'User Group: Usage Type', each Application can have relations to various User Groups, and the field 'Usage Type' on the relation can differ between User Groups ('Owner' for one Application, but 'User' for others).

By default, the aggregated color coding on the report is calculated with either minimum/maximum for string values or sum/average for numerical values (defined per field, e.g., the sum for cost data on the relation between Applications and IT Components). In the above example, the non-numerical, single-select value of 'Usage Type' is aggregated with the maximum based on how often the User Group is 'Owner' or 'User'. This behavior hasn't changed.

Now, users can either select a desired aggregation method (sum, min, max, avg) or add an individual Fact Sheet as a reference for the color coding. When a reference Fact Sheet is selected, all Fact Sheets on the report show a color determined based on the field value on the selected related Fact Sheet. In the above's example, when selecting the User Group 'Headquarter' as a reference, the 'Owner' or 'User' color-coded value is no longer aggregated from all related User Groups but the exact value only of the 'Headquarter' User Group.

This enables a typical use case of large enterprises to model the strategic importance and maturity of a Business Capability with pace layering (commodity, differentiation, innovation) in relation to the different parts of the enterprise with fields on the relations between Business Capabilities and other User Groups.

This screenshot shows an Application Matrix according to the example above. The x-axis shows the Data Objects processed by the Applications, and the clusters sum up how many Applications the 'Headquarter' User Group is the 'User' or 'Owner'.

Site note: The availability of views based on such fields on relations or related Fact Sheets depends on the field's 'Include in views' option in the Meta Model configuration.