Your team may need to track transactions or line items at a more granular level, especially while budgeting or doing detailed vendor planning. You'll do this by publishing multiple line-level details for a single dimension so you can drill into the total value at the dimension level and open the individual breakdown.
Learn more about the basics of publishing data to Cube.
Multi-line publishing example
In this example, we have two accounts, Account A and Account B and we want to add details for our Forecast scenario for January 2023. We don't need to specify a department or a vendor, so we'll publish to the Department - Other and Vendor - Other cross sections, but we do want to include an attribute called Internal ID for these accounts.
The first thing we'll do is set up our range with our dimension names and the transactions or line item details we want to publish. You can see our setup in the image below. Our spreadsheet has five new line items for Account A and three new line items for Account B.
When we select the range and publish this data to Cube, Cube will roll up each line item into a total for Account A and Account B for this scenario and time period. You can confirm this by fetching the account. In the image below, we're fetching Account A, and we see a total of 25.
When drilling down to the value 25, we'll see the line item details that include our attributes.
You can also publish line item details across time periods instead of a single time period. In this example, that might mean publishing line items for Accounts A and B from January through March of 2023 to account for all of Q1.
Overwrite line item details
When you publish at the dimension level rather than the line item level, the line item details will be overwritten. This can happen in one of two ways, but in both instances, it happens because Cube sees a single cross-section of dimensions.
You can think of this as instructions on how to find items stored in a warehouse. If there are many items on the same shelf, each item would need specific instructions on where to find it among the rest. If there is a single item on the shelf, the instructions could point to the shelf. If Cube sees multiple line-level details for a dimension intersection (account, time, scenario, etc), it knows there are many items stored on that shelf. If Cube sees just a dimension intersection, it will store one item on the shelf.
Publishing without attributes
Attributes help Cube differentiate between the lines or transactions if they are set on a dimension. If attributes have been set, continue to include them if you are publishing at that level of detail. Not including them will overwrite the value at the dimension level because Cube will see a single intersection.
Learn more about using attributes.
Publishing a selected area or range that includes a single intersection
If you use a subsection of your range or a range that includes a single dimension, Cube will see the dimension level value at the single intersection and overwrite the value.
In our example, if the value in the third row for Account A changes from 5 to 6, and you publish that specific cell using Use selected area, the publish will overwrite all the other values because you're showing Cube the single intersection and one value.
Therefore, when fetching Account A, the value will be 6, as displayed in the image below.
The drilldown will reflect the changes and look like the screenshot below.
Therefore, if you use the Use selected area option, you must select and publish all the cells of a specific account or cross-section to avoid overwriting the other values.
The following images show the result of publishing and selecting all the cells for Account A.
Fetching:
Drilling down: