Creating Custom Categories :: SAS(R) Visual Analytics 7.1: User's Guide

About Custom Categories

A custom category is a category data item that enables you to assign labels for groups of values in an existing category or measure.

For example, if your data source contains a category with country names, you might create a custom category to group the country names by continent. For a measure, you might label three value ranges as “Low,” “Optimal,” and “High.”

Create a Custom Category for a Measure

Here are the steps to create a custom category for a measure:

Select DataNew Custom Category.
Select the measure that you want to use for the custom category.
Specify the Name for the custom category.
Select whether the custom category uses Intervals or Distinct Values.
Specify the label groups for the custom category:
1. As needed, click New label to add a new label group to the custom category.
2. For each label group, click the label group heading (for example, Label1) to specify the label text.
  
  Note: The label text must use characters that are compatible with the locale of the data source. If the data source uses Unicode, then your labels can contain characters from any locale.
3. For each label group, specify the values that are associated with the label:
  
  For intervals, select and specify the minimum and maximum values for the interval.
  
  For distinct values, drag and drop values from the Values list onto the label group.
Select one of the following options:

Group remaining values as

assigns a label to all values that are not included in your label groups. The default label text is “Other.”

Show as missing

assigns all values that are not included in your label groups as missing values.
Click OK. The new custom category is displayed in the Data pane.

Create a Custom Category for a Category or a Date

Here are the steps to create a custom category for a category or a date:

Select DataNew Custom Category.
Select the category or date that you want to use for the custom category.
Specify the Name for the custom category.
Specify the label groups for the custom category:
1. As needed, click New label to add a new label group to the custom category.
2. For each label group, click the label group heading (for example, Label1) to specify the label text.
  
  Note: The label text must use characters that are compatible with the locale of the data source. If the data source uses Unicode, then your labels can contain characters from any locale.
3. For each label group, specify the values that are associated with the label.
  
  Drag and drop values from the Values list onto the label group.
Specify the Options for remaining values.

Select one of the following options:

Group remaining values as

assigns a label to all values that are not included in your label groups. The default label text is “Other.”

Show as missing

assigns all values that are not included in your label groups as missing values.

Show as is

retains the existing category value for all values that are not included in your label groups.
Click OK. The new custom category is displayed in the Data pane.