What is a Property in Pigment? A Property is a characteristic or an attribute of Pigment List items. They can be referenced in formulas to help plan by different attributes.  This article will showcase the options you have when setting up properties. 

Why use a Property?

There are many reasons to set up a property on a list.  They can be referenced in formulas to filter out data, group data together in hierarchies, set attributes to define how calculations are run, or be used to help illustrate trends in charts, and much more.  Because you are assigning the property to the list and not within a metric, it will only be a single dimension so you want to primarily use characteristics that are static.  For example, if you have a product list with product prices that change over time, you would set that up as a Metric rather than a List property.  

List properties can be any different data type, here are some examples for each type.

Text - Text can be used to define a unique characteristic of a list, or just provide information you’d like to display in a Block.  

Boolean -  Booleans are helpful as a property to define subsets of a list.  For example, If you have a group of certain items that need to be calculated differently, use a boolean to identify them, then reference it in a formula.

Number & Integers - Use these data types to add a numeric value to a list item that is static. 

Date - Use dates to showcase characteristics such as a start date or end date of a marketing campaign. 

Dimension - Dimension is one of the most powerful list properties.  By using a dimension type, you are grouping together lists.  You can display data differently using these groupings, create hierarchies for aggregation and allocation, and reference them in formulas.  Use the Dimension type on Countries to show Regions, Employees to show departments, or cost centers. 

The following example shows a Dimension list called Country with 3 Properties:

• Name (Text)

• Country code (Text)

• Region (Dimension)

• VAT (Number)

The previous example, also highlights that you can format a list and set a value as a percentage (under the VAT column). 

Creating a new Property

To create a new Property, click on the Configure button, the configure panel will open and you will see the sections Pages, Groups and Properties. Click on the + button in the Properties section.

In the menu that just opened:

1. Type a Name

2. Select a Type 

3. Define if the items of this new Property should be Unique or not.

This constraint ensures that all values are different from one another, preventing users from entering the same value twice.  Within Dimension lists, there must be a unique identifier.  It does not need to be the name of the list item.  With this boolean, you can set a list property to be the unique identifier. For example, you might have an employee list and want to set the Employee ID (text formatted list property) to be the identifier.  This will allow you to have two employees with the same name.   You can have multiple unique identifiers within a list. 

Configuring a List view

To have a more summarized view of your list, you can use the options Groups and Pages in the Configuration panel. Note that you can only group by or add in Pages, and Properties with the Dimension type.

Group

Groups allow you to connect multiple dimensions together.  These are dimension data type formatted and allow you to establish a relationship between different lists.  They are used to create hierarchies.  For example, you might have a Country list with a Group property formatted with a Region list.  Once established, you can use this in views to show an aggregated view.  They can also be used with the BY modifier to transform dimensionality. 

Pages

You can move a Dimension to a Page. This will allow you to filter the view on one or multiple values of this Dimension. See below the example with the Cohort Month in Pages.

The option Only show selected filters the list with the elements you already selected. You can quickly select All or Clear all by clicking the dedicated buttons.

Show/Hide Properties

To show or hide a Property: 

1. Open the Configure panel:

2. Go to the Properties section

3. Click on the Property settings ...

4. Click on Show or Hide Property.

Edit and Delete Properties

To modify or delete a Property:

1. Open the Configure panel:

2. Go to the Properties section

3. Click on the Property settings ... of the property you want to edit.

4. Click on Edit property

From there, you can change the name, type or delete this Property.

Making a Property Unique 

When working with a Dimension List there must be at least one unique property. By default, when creating a Dimension List, the Name is set to being unique.  If you have another Property that you want to be the unique identifier, you can toggle on Unique Item values this will ensure that every value in that property is unique.  Then you can turn off that option in Name to allow for duplicates. You will not be able to toggle this off in Name unless another property has been assigned this.

For example, if you created an employee list, you might use their name in the Name field, but create an Employee ID property that is unique.  By setting the Employee ID property to unique, it will allow you to deselect this option under Name, in case you have two employees with the same name. 

If you do not have another property that is unique, you can use the Automatically generated unique ID feature within a property set to Integer. This will automatically assign each item a unique integer that increases with every new item created. 

Show Property Usage 

By right-clicking on the header row within Lists, you can also see other options. To create new properties, by selecting Insert left... or Insert right… along with Displaying Totals , and formatting options .      You’ll also see Show Property Usage, this option will be able to help you identify all the areas in which the property of the list is referenced in formulas. 

Warning

Note that if you change the type on a Property with data in it, the data will be deleted. For example, if a Property is set to Text and you change it to Dimension, you will lose all text values. 

 

If a Property is updated to be identified as Unique, any items that have a duplicate value for that property will be deleted. For example, let's say you have a Property called Product SKU that isn’t initially set to Unique.  If you were to update that Property to be unique, any items with duplicated SKUs would be deleted.

 

 Now you know how to set up List properties!

See also

Measure what you need with Metrics

Writing your first formula