Member

In depth

In business intelligence and analytics, we organize data into dimensions—logical groupings such as Product, Region, or Customer. Each dimension contains many members.

At a technical level, dimensions often correspond to lookup tables in a data warehouse, where each row in the table is a member. For example, a “Customer” dimension table might list every customer by a unique identifier and a name. Every row (or member) in the table represents one customer that you can segment your metrics by.

Members serve two critical roles. First, they provide context for your measures (metrics). For example, when you view “revenue by region”, you’re summing a revenue measure for each region member (like "North America" or "EMEA"). Second, members drive filtering and grouping in dashboards. You filter on a member and the dashboard updates to show only that slice of your data. You filter on a member and the dashboard dynamically updates to show only that slice of your data.

High-cardinality dimensions—those with hundreds or thousands of members—require thoughtful design. Including too many members can slow down queries and overwhelm end users. That’s why dimension tables often include surrogate keys, parent/child hierarchies, and aggregated members (for example, grouping “California,” “Texas,” and “New York” into the “USA” parent member).

Pro tip

When you have a dimension with hundreds or thousands of members, reduce noise and speed up queries by grouping related attributes using hierarchies or tags. Read more about best-practices here.

Why Members matters

• Accurate slicing: Members define how you break down your metrics. If you don’t include the right members, your visualizations may be misleading or hide critical insights.
• Consistency and trust: Standardized members build confidence in your reports by ensuring everyone in your organization refers to the same attributes.
• Performance: Well-designed dimensions with curated members help your analytics platform run faster and more efficiently.

Members - In practice

1. Filtering dashboards: In BI tools, like Klipfolio PowerMetrics, you can filter dashboards to display data for specific members. For example, if you select “EMEA”, the dashboard and all of its metrics instantly update to only show data for that region.
2. Table presentation: Each member (like "Blue T-Shirt") displays as a row in the table alongside its corresponding metrics (for example, "units sold", "revenue", and "margin").
3. Drilling down: Start at a high-level member, such as “Europe.” Drill down into child members, like “Germany” or “France”, to uncover more detailed insights.
4. Custom views: Create a saved view that only includes starred members—say, your top-10 products—and share it with your team for focused discussions.

Members and PowerMetrics

In PowerMetrics, individual member entries are exposed when segmenting on a dimension and when applying filters.