Creating and Organizing Data Groups

Groups. This is a little different. Like sets, groups are a method of subdividing a single dimension.

This overcomes a limitation in your data. In your data, you may want to regroup your information into different categories. Maybe split your information by country or some other category.

It doesn't exist in your data, but you want to create it. For example, you could create a group for a certain type of product or products that all come from the same supplier or another parameter you define. The thing we want to group for this particular exercise is subcategories.

I'm going to go over here to subcategory. I'm going to click the drop down here and choose describe. I'm going to go here.

The thing I'll ask you to think about and then we'll do the grouping is, is there a way that we could organize this information into two separate categories? I won't give you, I'm not necessarily looking for an answer. I'm just having you think about it. Then I'm actually going to do the exercise.

If you look at the things that we're selling, we have 17 of them. These can fall into two categories. The two categories that these items can fall into is electrical and non-electrical.

Certain things can be electrical. Certain things can't be, are non-electrical. Some of them might be open to a matter of interpretation.

Just like a set, I want to create something that's always going to be available here. When you create a set, you get this icon that looks like two rings. You're going to get a specific icon for groups.

Let me see if I already spilled the beans about what we're going to do with groups. Electrical versus non-electrical categories, that's what we're going to do. Let me just see.

It's a manual process. That's what I'm going to let you know. It's not automatic.

You have to pick the items that are going to be electrical and non-electrical. Let's do that. I'm going to go to subcategory.

I'm going to head over to create, and then I'm going to choose group. When I choose group, this is where I can create my different groups. This is the name of the entire field.

I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to call this power type. That's going to be the new name of the field. Then I need to create a group.

I'll start with electrical. I'll click group, and I'll call this electrical. Accessories is not electrical.

That just happens to be where I'm creating it. I want to create another group, non-electrical. Chairs is definitely non-electrical.

I'm going to start here. I'm going to click group, and I'll type non-electrical. Chairs is definitely non-electrical.

Accessories is also non-electrical. I'm going to drag that and move it over into non-electrical. What else is electrical? Machines are electrical.

I could drag and drop, but you can also click the drop down here for the two categories you created, and I'm going to choose electrical. That moves it into electrical. You can also select using the shift key or using the control key.

Art, binders, bookcases. Hold on to shift. Now hold on to control.

I'll select envelopes, fasteners, furnishings, and labels. You can use shift to select multiple fields. Hold on to control.

Skip over the ones you don't want. These all belong in non-electrical. I can click the drop down and choose non-electrical, or I can drag this over on top of non-electrical, and now they're all part of that.

Appliances and copiers. I'll select that, and I can just click electrical, and I'll move in the others. Paper, that goes here.

Phones, electrical. Supplies and tables go to non-electrical. If you leave something out, it will create its own category.

If I don't do anything for tables, it'll create its own category. I want to make sure not to leave anything out. I'm going to take tables, and I'm going to move it over to non-electrical, or I can click the drop down here and say go to non-electrical.

As you can tell, the icon is probably going to be a paper clip because it's like taking a paper clip and putting it around a sheet of paper. I'm going to click okay, and now I've added power type. I'm going to create a new sheet.

I'm going to call it power type. I want to see how much of my sales is going to electrical and non-electrical devices, so I'll take sales. I'll move that into columns, and then take power type and move that into rows.

I want to open this up and choose the entire view, and here's my breakdown. I'm doing this as a bar chart. The category for electrical and non-electrical did not exist until I created it.

Now I can arrange all of my information based on electrical or non-electrical. You can also do something to make this display a lot more interesting. Perhaps you wanted to actually show the categories that make up electrical and non-electrical.

What if we added a new subcategory? Will it automatically go into a specific group? No, so you'll have to, again, it's a manual process, and I have a perfect analogy for what this is. So I'm going to create a category called alpha. I mean a group called alpha.

I'm saying category, but it's a group called alpha. Now there's a button down here called group. If you select the field, you can start.

I'm going to select accessories, and I'm going to say group, and then right next to the paper clip is where I'm going to type the name. Now the name automatically is the same name as the field that I select, but I'm going to say a to m, a dash m. Now anything that goes up to m, I'll hold on to the shift key. I can say add all this to a to m. The only thing I can add it to is a to m because that's the group that I created.

I'll click that. Everything just went to a to m. Now all of these are going to be groups unless I create another group, so I'll create another group. Now I created it in a weird location.

I probably shouldn't have created it there, so I'm probably going to have to move it around, but I'll call this n to z. It's like I created it right underneath a to m. Now I'm going to select all of this and then drag this to a to m. Then I'm going to select all of this and I'm going to move that to n to z. And now I have my two groups, a to n, n to z. When I click okay, I'll see it on the side, and it's listed as alpha. Now here's a cool thing you can do with this. This works really great for your visualizations.

I want to see the items that make up these amounts, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take subcategory and I'm going to move it into color. That is now a breakdown of all the subcategories. And you say, but how do we know which is which? Well, you have the legend here.

I know, but that's not useful. I want to be able to look at this. Okay, so then you're going to take subcategory and you're going to move it to the text label.

I'm going to drag it over here. There we go. Now if you want to format this, you can, but people can clearly see what is making up electrical and non-electrical by color.

The font color changes depending on what the color is, so that's the great thing about having automatic options. You can choose specific parts of the bar chart just by clicking on a specific one if you want to highlight a specific one. This is also something that will be available in the data visualization.

I'll just click back here to just deselect everything. So that's what you can do with the electrical versus non-electrical. You're subdividing your information into a different subset of information, but this one's called group.

So finally, my analogy for this, this is like breakout rooms on Zoom. Everyone has to be put in a breakout room. If you leave them out of a breakout room, they're not going to be there.

When you're creating groups, it's just like moving people to certain categories. If you're familiar with breakout rooms, you might as well call this feature breakout rooms, but you're just moving the objects there. Okay, so groups, I think these are the steps that are involved that I went over.

I said they're just like breakout rooms. Right-click on the dimension you want to create a set from, well it should be group from, and then choose create group. In the create group dialog box, organize your dimensions into desired groups.

Groups are manually assigned like breakout rooms in Zoom. Select contiguous or non-contiguous values and group them. You can also drag and drop.

Okay, click okay. If you want to exclude, then use sets. You have to include all the values as either in a group or outside of a group.

Paperclip for groups, union symbol for sets. The only other way is a calculated field, which we'll review later. You will probably use sets more than groups.

They're a little bit more flexible. They don't have to be manually assigned, and you're just going to have more options like top five, bottom five, condition, or just picking values. Overview on hierarchies, groups, and sets.

Hierarchies help you organize and clean up the fields in the sidebar. They also help you drill down into information if necessary without having to drag fields from the sidebar. Sets and group allow you to drag fields into the shelves to group or filter information, and we saw that.

I was able to bring power type in here and allow that to group my information, and then with the subcategory greater than 100,000 across four years, I was able to use this to also filter my subcategories across four years for values that are above 100,000. Sets have the same interface as filters, which we'll review in level two. No, actually in part two, that's what I meant.

Filters are local while sets are global. Filters only live in the sheet that you're in. You probably use sets more than groups.

Groups will always be a manual assignment. They will not be automatic, so if you update information, it won't automatically go to where you want it to. Sets are conditional and based on top and bottom rules or based on top and bottom rules.