Acumen provides an extremely powerful means of defining metrics against generic fields and values prior to knowing what these values actually are.
There are two forms of variables within Acumen:
- Variable Values
When defining a metric, instead of setting criteria based on a defined value, you can describe a metric in terms of a variable. An example is a custom metric called
High Cost. At the time of the metric being created, you do not know what this value should be. Instead you can create a variable called, for example,
High Cost Value and use this in the metric definition. At run-time, when an analysis is run, the user is prompted to enter a value for this variable which will subsequently be used in the calculations.
- Variable Fields
When defining a metric, if a field to be used in a metric definition is unknown, then a variable field can be created. In a similar manner to the variable value concept, when an analysis is run, the user is prompted for the actual field to be assigned. This is useful when a metric refers to, for example, a user-defined or code field that is not known at the time of creation of the metric.
You can define a metric using variable values, variable fields, or both.
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