Recency wizard

The Recency wizard creates a virtual variable on a specified table in the system (identified as the grouping table) that contains the value of a specified variable from a specific record on a child table (the transaction table). The record that is chosen is based upon an order defined using another transaction table variable.

The grouping table and transaction table can be specified in the wizard or by dragging on a selection with an RFV Recency.

Recency definition will also be used. For example, suppose you have an RFV selection with the grouping table of People and transaction table of Holidays and the Recency element of the RFV is set to the First 1 holiday by booking date. This selection can then be used in the wizard with the target data item as Holiday Destination. The resulting variable that is created will be on the grouping table (People) and it will contain the Destination of the first holiday (by Booking Date) associated with that Person.

On the Wizard tab click on the Recency link to start the wizard - Start

Start¶

This is the first page of the recency wizard and lets you choose how to define the variable to be created.

If you have an RFV Recency selection that you want to use to set how the variable will be defined, then choose the Yes radio button and you will be asked to specify the selection. If you don't, then choosing the No radio button will allow you to define the grouping and transaction tables.

If you select:

• Yes, I have an RFV selection — click Next to go to Source
• No, I don't have an RFV selection — click Next to go to Transaction selection

Source¶

If you have an RFV Recency selection to use you should specify it here. If there is more than one RFV element in the selection the next step of the wizard

Any selection elements "above" the RFV element will select which grouping records to set the virtual variable for. Any grouping records that fall outside of this selection will have no value set.

Drag on the selection containing the RFV node(s)

• If there is only one RFV Recency node click Next to go to Target
• If there is more than one RFV Recency node click Next to go to RFV selection

RFV selection¶

If the selection that was specified in the previous step had more than one RFV element in it, you will have to specify which RFV element to use

Drag the appropriate RFV Recency node on to the drop box.

Transaction selection¶

If you don't have a RFV Recency selection then you need to specify a grouping and transaction table. The transaction table is the first one to be specified and is done so by specifying the group of transaction records to include.

For example, a grouping table could be People and a transaction table could be Bookings. The variable to be copied from the transaction table to the grouping table grouping record are specified elsewhere. Assuming that the Destination of the first Booking ordered by Booking Date is specified, the Recency wizard would then create a new variable on the People table that would record the Destination of the earliest Booking associated with the Person.

If, however, you want to find the earliest flight-only Booking taken by each person, drop a selection of bookings that are flight-only here.

Grouping table¶

Once a transaction table has been chosen, the grouping table can then be specified.

The grouping table must be a parent or "ancestor" table of the transaction table (i.e. it must be higher up the System Tables diagram than the transaction table.

For example, if the Bookings table was specified as the transaction table, the grouping table could either be People or Households given the following table structure:

Recency settings¶

Once the transaction and grouping tables have been specified, you need to define which of the transaction records associated with each grouping record should be chosen.

You can choose the first nth or last nth transaction record to use. If you use an order of first or last then you need to specify a position. An order of first and a position of 2 would give the second record and an order of last and a position of 3 would give the third to last record. Note that in the first example, if a person only has one booking associated with them, picking the second record will result in an unclassified booking. For first and last orders a variable needs to be specified to decide on the order (i.e. should the second booking be the second earliest or the second cheapest). Any numeric variable or ordered selector variable can be specified.

Target¶

Regardless of whether you specified the RFV using a selection or explicitly in the wizard, you then need to choose the data item from the transaction table to populate the new variable with. The text of the wizard should be populated to show which record the data item will be pulled from. In the below screenshot the record to be used will be "The first record when sorted by Booking Date".

The variable that is created will be of the same type as the data item specified. For example if the data item is a Numeric variable such as Booking Cost, then the virtual variable to be created will also be a Numeric variable. However, if the data item is a Selector such as Booking Destination then the virtual variable to be created will be a Selector.

Drag your variable on the Drag your data item here box.

Folder¶

Choose the folder that the new variable should be created in.

Create (if necessary) and highlight the folder to hold your Virtual Variable.

Add notes¶

You can choose to add notes to your variable. These can be viewed later by right-clicking on the variable once it is in the System explorer window.

Enter any notes you wish to record.

Name¶

This step of the wizard allows you to define what the Virtual Variable will be called.

Enter the name of your variable in the Description box.

To overwrite an existing virtual variable drag it on to the Drop the variable to overwrite here drop box.

Tick the Create URN Snapshot box to record the exact records found at this time so it can be recreated after a refresh of the data if needed.

Tick the Modify Security Attributes box to allow you access to Security (This option is only available on the Enterprise Version)

Security¶

This is an optional step available on the Enterprise version of the software.

Use the tick boxes to set the security setting you wish to apply to this variable.

Finish¶

When you reach this step, the actions required by this wizard have been performed. The new variable has been highlighted in the System explorer window.

Tick the Show new variable as a selection box if you want to view the variable when the wizard is closed.

Click Finish to close the wizard.