Forum Discussion
What is contiguous selection?
Some functions only work with "contiguous selections". What are they exactly? For example,
Function 'SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR' expects a contiguous selection when the date column is not unique, has gaps or it contains time portion. And what is meant here "date column is not unique"?
6 Replies
All of the time intelligence functions require a date table (more like a date column) as a parameter. That date column has to include every date (say, incluing weekends and holidays) with no "gaps". That is what is meant by continguous (which, sounds similiar to "continuous").
Some weird things can happen though, if you are trying to use these time intelligence functions like SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR... if you use a slicer to remove rows from the middle. Same period last year wants to look at just exactly 1 "period" -- that can be a week, day, month, 4.6 weeks... but they need to be 1 continuous range not like "the 1st and 4th week of July" (which would have a gap... in the 2nd and 3rd weeks, and is not allowed).
Does that mean that I cannot use time intelligence functions for a data set like this:
Date Sales 2016-01-01 100 2016-01-04 80 2016-01-20 200 2017-01-02 60 2017-01-05 40 2017-01-21 20
I.e. I will not be able to compare January-2016 to January-2017 because dates are not "contiguous"?
