One of the features that end users generally want is the ability to group multiple dimension attribute values into their own understandable groupings. For example, if we have a Product Name column, then end users would like to group different products under different categories like say Computer Products, Household Products etc. Also, they would like to have the capability to drill down from these groupings into their corresponding individual products. In order to achieve this we can use a feature in Answers called as Bins. Bins can group multiple values into smaller simpler groups thereby helping end users to analyze their data better. Lets see how this Bins work. We shall start with a simple report containing the Product Names and their corresponding sales.
Now if you go the formula section of the PRODUCT_NAME column, you would find a tab called as bins.
Now lets try to add a simple Bin. As you would see this would pop up a filter window wherein we can choose how we want to group the values into. In our case lets choose a set of products into a simple group called as “Important Computer Goods”. And for the remaining products lets group them as “Remaining Goods”.
Now if you go back to the formula console, you would see that the corresponding CASE statements would have been generated automatically. Now lets view the results. As you would see you only have 2 groupings now and you can drill down within each of these groups. Also, aggregation for these groups would happen automatically.
A very simple feature but can reduce a lot of effort while writing case statements.
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