Smart View Lesson 4: Member Selection and Aliases

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📘 Smart View & Essbase Basics Course · Lesson 4 of 6

In this article
  1. Open it
  2. Ways to select
  3. Names and aliases
  4. Practice

Zooming is quick, but for a report you want specific members in a specific order. Member Selection is the precise tool.

Open it

Click a cell holding a member (or the POV) › Member Selection. The hierarchy appears on the left; chosen members on the right.

Ways to select

  • Browse the tree and tick members; use the arrows to order them.
  • Search by name or alias.
  • Filters: Children, Descendants, Level (0 = bottom members), Generation, attributes, UDAs.

Names and aliases

Members often have a technical name (e.g. 410000) and aliases (e.g. “Sales Revenue”). Choose the alias table in Options. Reports read better with aliases; formulas and uploads often need member names.

💡 Use ‘Level 0 descendants of North’ instead of picking 40 branches by hand. When a new branch is added to the hierarchy, your report includes it after refresh.

Examples use a sample Essbase application (Sample.Basic-style dimensions). Connection URLs, applications and member names differ in every company.

Practice

Build the 6-account grid described in the checklist.

📎 Practice files for this article

Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.

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