I am completely lost with breakdowns & filters

[tajarichardson]

I have accidentally managed to get it right once or twice, but I am still struggling with creating breakdowns. I'm trying to create an incident subcategory breakdown for assignment groups and have made very little progress and am at my wits end.

For my breakdown source, I have tried both the Sys_Choice & Incident table using the Sys ID field. Using the Choice_Sys list does give me the subcategories as a breakdown, but I cannot filter them to the assignment group.Using the Incident table just lists the INC #s for the assignment group as the elements, instead of the subcategory label/name. I mapped both to  incident - subcategory.

I have seen this breakdown before, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. 

[Tracy Davis]

this is what I'm using for the breakdown source for Assignment groups. Are you looking for something more refined than this? What do you mean by subcategories?

name: Groups.Active

Facts table = Group [sys_user_group]

field = sys_id

filter: active IS TRUE

[tajarichardson]

I'm not looking to have the assignment group in the breakdown itself, it will be in the breakdown source. And by "subcategories" I am referring to the Incident table that will have "Desktop" category and a subcategory item of "Hardware", "Software" etc. 

[Josh Cooper]

It's a little confusing when you're getting started dealing with things, I'll try to explain it a little better than probably our regular documentation does.

The Breakdown Source's job is to get every possible value of a breakdown.  So for example, if you want to be able to see Incident based indicators based on Assignment Group, the Breakdown Source for that would actually be the Group table, rather than incident, for example.  What it's doing is collecting the sys_ids of all the records in the source that you set, as possibilities.

The Automated Breakdown record's main job is to begin linking things together, set the name of the Breakdown as it appears, add security if needed, etc.

Then the Breakdown Mapping tells it 'for this table, for this breakdown, look in this field to find the sys_id that's mentioned in the breakdown source". 

So using the groups example, the breakdown source includes sys_ids for all the groups that match the criteria.  The breakdown records says "For this breakdown, these are the mappings to use" and the breakdown mapping says "Look in the Assignment Group field for the reference to the groups table", because even though we see the correct name, the actual value of the field is a sys_id, or record identifier, for some particular group on the groups table.

Choice fields, like subcategory make it a little wonky, because they're all coming from the sys_choice table rather than a direct reference.  You had it right, in this case the Breakdown source is sys_id on the sys_choice table, but you'll need to tell it also "the table is Incident" and "the element (or field name) is subcategory".  Then it knows to get all the possible values from sys_choice that match those criteria, and that those are all valid options for the breakdown mapping to find.

Then in the breakdown you generate from that, you'll set your breakdown mapping against Incident, and the field is just subcategory.  Then when it looks at the specific records, it will use the value in that field to match against the list in the Breakdown Source, and when it matches, credit the current count/sum/avg for that element of the breakdown.  If the sys_id it has in the field doesn't match an entry from the Breakdown Source, then it goes into that 'unmatched' bucket, so if ALL of your records are going in the Unmatched bucket, then the mapping doesn't agree with the Breakdown Source.

Now to see one in terms of the other, which it kinda sounds like to me is what you're wanting, Incidents by Assignment Group AND Subcategory - that's a Breakdown Matrix.  Once you've got each breakdown working.. i.e. Assignment Group is breaking out correctly, and Subcategory is breaking out correctly, then in the Indicator itself, you check the box that says "Breakdown Matrix" and it will analyze them in terms of the other. 

It's a good idea to only do this where the info is valuable though, and exclude the ones you don't need by adding a breakdown matrix exclusion... because the data is now cubic.  Like if you have 100 assignment groups and 10 subcategories, and the indicator is daily, then the Assignment Group breakdown will create 100 scores in the scores table, and Subcategories breakdown will create 10, but the matrix of Assignment Group and Subcategory will create 1000 records per day. 

The tables are built to handle data volumes like this, but for example, if you only need subcategory and assignment group, then make sure you turn off the breakdown matrix for Assignment Group / Assigned To, which can be so large as to cause warnings in the collection job. 

Hopefully this helps! 

[tajarichardson]

Thank you soooo much! This helped a ton!