Quick Exceptions is a tool that highlights exceptional data at the click of a button. It looks for a change, whether a drop or a growth, in current values as compared to a previous period or to a same period the year before, based on a simple condition you specify.
The condition consists of a relational operator (less than, greater than, less than or equal to, greater than or equal to) and a threshold which is a percentage value. For example, to look for a drop of more than 10%, the condition will be <10%.
Quick Exceptions works on the time dimension: current values can be compared with values from the previous time frame or with values from the same time frame last year, depending on the user’s choice.
When the comparison is to the “previous period”, for each view in the workboard the Quick Exceptions tool finds the most relevant time dimension, in the X-axis, in the Y-axis or in the slicers. If the time dimension is in the grid, the comparison is made to the previous column or row. If the grid is sliced by the time dimension then the comparison is made according to the first slicer found. For example, if the data is sliced by day, the values are compared to the previous day, if sliced by month then they are compared to the previous month. When the comparison is to the “parallel period”, and the data is sliced by month then the values are compared to the same month last year.
Data cells are highlighted if the change ratio between the periods has reached the specified threshold.
As you click the Show Quick Exception button, indicators appear in data cells highlighting values that meet the specified condition, in all the grids on the workboard. Clicking the button again hides the indicators.
You can analyze a highlighted cell by selecting Cause & Effect from the context menu. When you select Cause & Effect for a cell, the system investigates into the depths of the data, drilling through all the dimensions to look for potential problem spots that stem from this cell.