Concepts

Understand the types of concepts and how to create them.

Overview

You can use concepts in Visier to standardize information, such as defining employee movement in your organization or diversity factors, to filter and focus your analysis. Concepts use dimensions, properties, and other concepts to reclassify existing data into new groups. For example, Visier's Performance concepts reclassify your performance data, such as ratings from 1-10, as High Performers, Medium Performers, and Low Performers.

In Visier, your data is first mapped to properties and dimensions in Visier's analytic model and then optionally reclassified through concepts. This means that concepts are populated with data from properties or dimensions.

Example: Employee Movement concept

If you want to analyze employee movement in Visier, you must configure the Employee Movement concept to consider specific data for movement, such as when an employee moves in or out of a team or location. In this example, your data about teams and locations are first mapped to the Organization Hierarchy and Location Hierarchy dimensions in Visier's analytic model before being used in the Employee Movement concept. Configuring concepts improves data standardization by providing clear and consistent categorizations of your data.

Example: Generation concept

Let's say you want to reclassify your employees into their generations using their birth dates. To do that, you would use data from the Birth Date property in selection concepts like Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z to select particular birth years for each generation.

Tip: To learn more, take the Visier University eLearning courses: Understanding Visier's data architecture and Creating and configuring concepts. For a tutorial that walks you through configuring concepts, see Configure Concepts After Loading New Data.

Selection concepts

Use a selection concept to organize your data into groups. Selection concepts are true or false statements, meaning that if the criteria is met, it is true, and if not, it is false. For example, an employee is either a veteran or not a veteran.

In Visier, selection concepts are defined in terms of one or more dimensions, properties, or other selection concepts. For example, HR Employee is a selection concept that selects a population of subject members defined by the Job Name dimension. It defines the Job Name subject members HR Business Partner, Senior Recruiter, Chief Human Resources Officer, etc. as the HR Employee population.

Selection concepts have the following characteristics in Visier:

  • Select members of a population to filter. For example, the Current Employee member selection concept selects data values that you define as "current" employees, like Active or On Notice employees. Alternatively, the Millennials calculated selection concept uses a formula to selects birth date values within a specific time range to filter employees as part of the "Millennials" generation.
  • Available as a group by in visualizations. For example, you can group Headcount by the Woman concept.
  • Available as a filter in visualizations. For example, you can filter a Breakdown of Headcount by Organization visualization by the High Performer concept.
  • Can be used in metric formulas. For example, the Employee Count for Women metric formula filters by the Woman concept.

To configure a new or existing selection concept, see Modify a Selection Concept.

Process concepts

Use a process concept to study a change in the data. In Visier, process concepts are attributes of subjects that describe the steps or stages that the subject goes through and the outcome of the process. For example, a process concept on the Applicant subject called Interview Process describes the stages that an applicant goes through in an interview pipeline, such as the applied, interviewed, and offered stages. The outcomes for this process concept indicate the results of the process for each subject member, such as hired yet to start, rejected, and abandoned application.

Process concepts have the following characteristics in Visier:

  • Represent a sequence or process of stages and outcomes. For example, the Applicant Process concept represents the stages that an applicant goes through, such as Screened and Interviewed, and has outcomes such as Hired Yet to Start or Rejected.
  • Require a configured dimension in Visier to define the concept stages and outcomes. For example, the Applicant Process concept is defined from the Applicant Stage dimension.
  • Available in Pipeline visualizations.

To configure a new or existing process concept, see Modify a Process Concept.

Movement concepts

Use a movement concept to study the movement of a data record. For example, an employee movement concept shows how employees move between locations or teams in your organization. Movement is captured in the Internal Movement and Internal Move Count metrics. In Visier, movement concepts define which properties are thought of as "movement" when their value changes for a subject member. This concept allows you to better analyze subject movement in your organization.

Movement concepts have the following characteristics in Visier:

  • Reclassify changes in data values as "movement". For example, the Employee Movement concept reclassifies a change from Canada to US as a "Move out" from the Canada employee population.
  • Define the dimensions that, when a value changes, are considered a move in, move out, or move within a population. For example, the Employee Movement concept defines the Location Hierarchy and Organization Hierarchy dimensions as "movement" dimensions. This means that when an employee's location or organization changes, that employee is counted as a move in, out, or within the location or organization population.
  • Available in Movement visualizations.

To configure a new or existing movement concept, see Modify a Movement Concept.

Calculation concepts

Use a calculation concept to represent a hierarchy between metrics where the child members are summed up to their parent (for example, Parent A = Child B + Child C). For example, the Total Rewards metric is made up of the Direct Compensation and Benefits metrics. The Direct Compensation metric is made up of the Base Pay, Variable Pay, Supplemental Pay, and Long-term Incentive metrics, while the Benefits metric is made up of Health Benefits and Pay for Time Not Worked metrics. All of these metrics sum up to their parent metric, which then sum up to Total Rewards.

Calculation concepts have the following characteristics in Visier:

  • Represent a hierarchical relationship between calculations. This supports aggregation where the child calculations sum up to the parent. For example, in the Employee Exit Model concept, the Resignation Count, Retirement Count, and Other Voluntary Turnover Count calculations sum up to the Voluntary Turnover Count parent calculation.
  • Require a configured dimension in Visier to define the concept hierarchy. For example, the Employee Exit Model hierarchy is defined from the Employee Exit Reason dimension.
  • Allow the creation of similar metrics within the hierarchy. For example, the Employee Exit Model contains the metrics Resignation Count and Retirement Count.

To configure a new or existing calculation concept, see Modify a Calculation Concept.

Should I create a concept?

Tip: Before creating a new concept, check whether your Visier solution already contains the concept you want. To find all concepts in your solution, do any of the following:

  • In a project, on the navigation bar, click Model > Concepts. You can then filter the list of objects by concept type and review the list.
  • Download the Application Definition and refer to the Concepts sheet. For more information, see Download the Application Definition.

If you're creating new attributes for an analytic object, you might wonder when to create a concept as opposed to a property or dimension. If your attribute meets any of the following guidelines, a concept is probably the right object for your data.

  • The attribute gets its values from a property or dimension.
  • The attribute will be used as a filter or group by in visualizations.
  • The attribute reclassifies data from other objects into new groups, such as:
    • Selects values that fit into the same group. For example, Millennials is a selection concept that selects all employees with a Birth_Date property between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1996.
    • Selects values to represent hierarchical relationships between calculations. For example, Employee Exit Model is a calculation concept that groups exit-related calculations into a hierarchy where Resignation, Retirement, and Other Voluntary exits roll up to calculate Voluntary Turnover.
    • Selects values to represent the processes or sequences that an analytic object goes through. For example, Applicant Process is a process concept that groups applicants by the stages of their application, such as Applied, Screen, Interviews Started, Offered, and Background Checked.
    • Selects values to represent movement that an analytic object experiences. For example, Employee Movement is a movement concept that groups changes to an employee's location or organization as a move in, out, or within a location or organization.

In addition to these criteria, review each concept's characteristics to decide which type of concept to create.

After you determine that you want to create a certain concept type, you can create the concept in a project in Model > Concepts. For more information, see Create a concept.

Create a concept

Create a new concept for your solution.

Note: For a tutorial that walks you through creating a new concept, see Create New Employee Attributes and Metrics.

Who can use this feature?

  • Analytic Model Developer

  • Basic Model Developer

  • Advanced Model Developer

Not sure if you have this feature or capability? Reach out to your administrator.

  1. Do one of the following:

    • In a project, on the navigation bar, click Model > Concepts.

    • In a project, on the navigation bar, click Model > Analytic Objects.

      1. Select an object.

      2. In Attributes, click Add Attribute > Concept.

  2. Select a concept type.
  3. If you selected Selection Concept, select Member or Calculated.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select an analytic object, and then click Next.

  6. Type a display name and description.

  7. Click Create.

In this section