InetSoft Tech Info - Report Target Conditions

Report targets conditions allow users to create custom metrics that facilitate evaluation and management. InetSoft's visually driven reporting software empowers executives with the tools to extract and pair information when needed. View the information below to learn more about the Style Intelligence solution.

A target condition specifies the property you want to detect in your data. It can be one of the following:

• General Condition, a simple threshold condition
• Period Condition, a time-based trend
• Script Condition, a custom-coded function

A general condition is a Boolean expression which is evaluated for the metric field. If the condition evaluates to false, the specified notification action is launched. General conditions are usually used to check whether a metric stays above or below a specified threshold value.

The General Condition will only evaluate the first record of the metric. It is meant to be used for metrics which have pre-aggregated data.

To create a general condition, select the 'General condition' radio button option in the Condition tab. Create a Boolean expression using the drop-down list boxes, e.g., [Quantity] [is] [equal to|greater than|less than|one of|between|starting with|contains] [5000]. Be sure to click on the 'Append' button to add the expression to the expression list. Use the 'and'/'or' radio button to choose the Boolean operator. Click on the 'Modify' button to change a selected Boolean expression from the list. Expressions can be rearranged using the 'Up' and 'Down' buttons.

Period conditions are used to compare a record at one time period to a record at another time period. Period conditions can only be performed when the metric asset has data grouped by a date field. Each individual group value is termed as a 'period', e.g., Sept. 06, Oct. 06, Nov. 06, or 2004, 2005, 2006, etc. The current period is the group value corresponding to the current date, e.g., if today's date is Nov-25-2006 then Nov. 06 would be the current period for Date Grouping by 'Month'. And 2006 would be the current period for Date Grouping by 'Year'.

The following are the steps to follow while setting up a period condition. Refer to the 'Period Condition' Figure that follows.

1. In the 'Target Periods' box, enter a 'Reference Period' and a 'Period To Evaluate'. For example, assuming the data is grouped by month, in order to compare the previous month to the month before. Set 'Period To Evaluate' as '1' and the 'Reference Period' as '2'.

2. In the 'Date Span' box select a 'Start date' and 'End date'. This will filter the data returned by the metric asset. The date range should encompass the desired Evaluation and Reference time periods. The entire range of data fetched, will display on the (default) detail report in the subscriber's scorecard.

3. In the 'Condition' box select 'Increasing' or 'Decreasing'. Then select an option: 'Any': e.g., any increase or decrease; 'Constant Value': e.g., Increase of 500 or Decrease of 200, etc.; or 'Percent': e.g., Increase of 3 (3%) or Decrease of 2 (2%), etc.

4. In the box titled 'Tolerance' enter an 'Upper and 'Lower' tolerance (permissible variation in target). The Tolerance could be expressed as a constant value or a percentage above or below the target.(e.g.; For a Target:5000, Constant Upper: 100, Constant Lower: 100) the corresponding upper and lower bounds would be 5100 and 4900.

View live interactive examples in InetSoft's dashboard and visualization gallery.

A script condition is a custom-coded JavaScript function which returns a boolean value. The function has access to a parameter called 'metricData', which represents all the values in the metric column. It is possible to add conditional logic based on the data values. If the value returned is 'false' the notification action is launched (shown below).

Note: 'metricData' is a 2 dimensional array representing the entire asset (data block) of the metric. The first row contains header information.