Intelligent use of time implies wisdom, so when we talk about time intelligence patterns, what does it mean and how can we apply it to our analysis?
Time Intelligence is the practice of applying your calendar or time dimension to your measures. Think about your sales, understanding the value of a sale is great and you may even be able to work out a simple profit ([Sale Value] – [Cost of Goods]), but really you need to have that over time to bring Business Intelligence, [Daily Sales], [Weekly Sales] or [Monthly Sales] for example. Aggregation makes the analysis make sense. Comparing a sale with the sale before brings nothing to the table.
All Business Intelligence suites have a capability of Time Intelligences the capability is ubiquitous, Power BI context makes life much simpler, but it is important to remember the rules. Time Intelligence functions after all apply some context and that must be remembered.
There are three flavours of Time Intelligence; Aggregation (Month to Date Sales), Comparison (MoM Sales growth) and Informational (Month end Stock level).
The contextual nature of Power BI means that working out the pattern once allows you to then apply it to a more specific setting so Sales Month to Date of Yellow Umbrellas. Understanding that context can come from usage rather than being explicitly part of a measure is one of the turning points for many in their personal journey with Power BI.
Time Intelligence is an excellent way to find your feet with this element of Power BI. Starting with a simple total, you can then expand that into a month to date, or a year to date before trying out the Month over Month or Year over Year measures as well.
Total Sales – SUM of a sales value column
Sales Month to Date – SUM of a sales value column where they date is within a month.
Month over Month sales growth – Previous sales month to date minus the current month to date sales
What you see is that the simplistic [Total Sales] becomes increasingly complex as progressive (month to date) and comparative contexts (MOM growth) are added. This complexity is a reason why many adopt Calculation Groups (something for another conversation) so the additional complexity becomes transparent.
Context keeps coming up as you explore Power BI, understanding the context of your measures and how to evolve that context is key to success. Often knowing context usage can even save you having to write what could end up being complex measures. What we have seen over the course of this article is that context can be brought with a measure in terms of our true Time Intelligence functions, however context is also from the usage of the visuals and (for want of a better word) the context it is used under.
#geordielife #dataliteracy #timeintelligence
