Dimensions are a key element of Workday Adaptive Planning. Creating a dimension is very easy. Here are some approaches to create dimensions in Workday Adaptive Planning.

The first thing to consider is hierarchy. It is Revelwood’s best practice to keep dimensions flat, meaning with no hierarchy at all, and leave that to dimension attributes. (I will cover more in detail in an upcoming blog post.) We like to keep them flat in order to tag them with dimension attributes. This is very useful when further breaking down dimensions by different categories. If we need dimensions to be in a hierarchy, we build that structure as attributes and keep dimensions flat at the leaf most level.

To add a dimension in Adaptive Planning, select the three lines and navigate to modeling and click Dimensions. At the top of the screen notice this little Create new dimension button. 

Click it and give your new dimension a name and unique code.

Now from here there’s a couple ways to add values to your new dimension.

The first is to add it manually. Select your new dimension and click this icon next to the previous create new dimension button, the Create new dimension value button. 

From here, give each dimension value a name and a unique code. This could take a while, which is why I recommend one of the next two options instead of the manual process.

The second possible way is via an import. First we need an import template. Click this Import dimension structure button

and download an import template. Open it, and in column A on the first row only, write the name of your overall dimension. 

In the next row in column F and G, include the unique dimension value code and name from your data source. 

Save and return to Adaptive Planning. Choose your new file and click import. If all goes well you’ve saved a ton of time populating your new dimension.

The third choice is by far the easiest and fastest method. To import dimension values select the check box Data import automatically creates new dimension values:

The parent dimension is already created. Tagging data you’re going to import with a nonexistent dimension value will cause Adaptive Planning to automatically populate your new dimension.

And that’s it for creating dimensions! 

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Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Reusable Reports

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Crosstabs – The Significance of and How to Build

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Creating an Excel File Data Source