Custom Date Dimensions?

[Tom_Baty]

Hello,

Is it possible to create custom date type dimensions like Day, Week etc. Our analysts have asked for dimensions like Financial Year and Financial Quarter- I know you could create date ranges for these, but they're after a single dimension they can drag in and have it split into multiple values like Day does. I had a crack at adding a classification but it doesn't seem possible to add classifications to date objects either.

Cheers

[igupta]

Hi @Tom_Baty ,

I can only think of custom implementation to achieve this. On each tracking call, you can pass a variable which can populate the value like financial year 2023 or Quarter 2024Q2. Of course, this would require bit of a JavaScript along with non-retroactive tracking. Maybe other experts in this community might have a better idea.

Best,
Isha

[Tom_Baty]

Hi @igupta ,

Thanks for your answer. This is the solution I was thinking of, or at least passing a date string as an eVar and then building classifications based on that, but the lack of retroactive tracking is holding me back. Just checking there isn't a solution that can apply for past data before I implement the evar.

Cheers,
Tom

[MahimitraCh1]

You do have some dimensions already given by adobe right ?

But if we want financial year to start from april and custom requirements then may be we can raise ticket with adobe for given RS.  Or we can go with custom implementation in adobe launch or tags.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Custom Date ranges can also be created like this, and still split into "Days".

For instance, I have some custom "Monday to Sunday" date ranges to align with marketing needs, and they can be broken out:

[Tom_Baty]

Hi Jennifer,

Sorry, wasn't very clear in my original post, but I'm after a new date dimension that will split out in the same way Day does, rather than split out into days if I drag days in to the workspace.
Creating date ranges is useful, but if the analysts want to check something over the last year at a financial week level, they would have to drag in 52 different date ranges for each financial week- wondering if it is possible to create a 'Financial Week' dimension that they can drag in and have it split out into all the FW values for the given report date range. Is this something it's possibly to get added to our reports by raising a support ticket?

I've mocked it up here:

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Unfortunately, all dimensions that we can set are "text", so they won't act like "Day" or "Week" or "Month", etc.

However, depending on your needs, you might be able to get away with just a text dimension that stores values like:

"FW 01-2009/10"

Unfortunately, the only way I can see this working is to start tracking it now... with Launch, calculate the current Financial Week, build out the value, and send it on every hit.

I don't think you can create a backwards compatible breakdown though... since Classifications are based on the values, not when those values were tracked (and there's no way to create classifications on the standard Date Dimensions - though that would be an awesome feature that you should totally request in the Ideas area (https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-ideas/idb-p/adobe-analytics-ideas).

The other option for right now, and again, it's not ideal... would be to use Report Builder to get the data into Excel, and create your Financial Weeks using "date math" in Excel.... 

[Josh__Stephens]

You can update the calendar settings if the option your company uses is a standard one.  Not exactly sure what all that updates in traditional Analytics and any issues that could cause.

Doesn't help in AA, but in CJA you can change more settings and they're applied retroactively.  You can set the first month in the year, for example.  And the year dimension will then show the year number and date range.  Q1 in this case, would be July-Sept.