Auto date/time vs manually created hierarchies

NiklasBergh I could be mistaken but I don't think that you have this quite right. The hierarchy created by Auto Time Intelligence is Year/Quarter/Month/Day. When you drag a Date into a field for a visual, it defaults to the that hierarchy but you can switch it to just the Date field if you so desire. This is a UI thing, not a property of the hierarchy. It is the UI trying to be "helpful". However, it is still the same hierarchy versus column under the hood, the same as if you created the hierarchy manually. You just don't get the UI "benefit" of being able to drag the date column into a field for a visual and have it automatically use the hierarchy versus the date column. You have to either drag the date column into the field or drag the hierarchy into the field when you create the hierarchy manually.

Hi GeraldGEmerick, you are correct; I simplified away Quarter there.

As for the Date 'parent' to the hiearchy, whilst I agree with you that it seems to be primarily aimed as a selection helper (and also keeps my field list cleaner) in my testing it seems like it is not only that.

Let me elaborate.

See this screenshot when using auto date/time:

Looks as intended and so on, as you can see I use two of the parts of the date in the line chart to present year/month date and the widget perfectly fines allows me to selecte between Continuous or Categorical; all good.

If I however manually create the hierachy on the side of the date without auto date/time's involvement, and defines the table as a calendar table (with Date as the field) the widget does not _understand_ that the hierachy data is to be considered Continuous; whenever using my hiearchy I cannot select Continous (the entire dropdown disappears), but if I use the date field underlying the hiearchy instead then I can use Continuous.

I (so far, absent better explanations) attribute this difference in behavior to the fact that when the date is 'above' the hiearchy then the widget likely _understands_ that the hieachy data is actually possible to consider Continuous, even though I use only the underlying hiearchy fields with it.

And hence the specific question.. whether I can selectively use auto date/time where I choose to rather than for everything in the file, or if I can alternately get the auto date/time-equivalent tree structure.