PreviousPeriods

Syntax

 PreviousPeriods(Member_Expression)

Arguments

Examples

PreviousPeriods returns optimized set of previous periods that can be used to aggregate some measure value for all previous time periods. The function often used for cumulative values over time, for example, default measure Cumulative story points resolved, or when all activities of previous periods should be considered to get value for a current period, for example, default measure Open issues - all previously created and resolved issues; default measure Issues history - all previous changes in the issue to see the current state or the state at the end of any period.

Here is in more depth how it works. For example, PreviousPeriods( [Time].[2015].[Q2 2015].[Jun 2015].[Jun 03 2015] ) will return a set:

{
  [Time].[2014],
  [Time].[2015].[Q1 2015],
  [Time].[2015].[Q2 2015].[Apr 2015], [Time].[2015].[Q2 2015].[May 2015],
  [Time].[2015].[Q2 2015].[Jun 2015].[Jun 01 2015], [Time].[2015].[Q2 2015].[Jun 2015].[Jun 02 2015]
}

which is all years until previous year (in this example Time dimension starts with year 2014), all current year quarters until previous quarter (in this example Q1 2015), all current quarter months until the previous month (Apr 2015 and May 2015) and all current month days until the previous day (Jun 01 2015 and Jun 02 2015).

The following formula can be used to calculate a cumulative sum of resolved issues until the previous period:

Sum(
  PreviousPeriods([Time].CurrentHierarchyMember),
  [Measures].[Issues resolved]
)

If we want to calculate a cumulative sum of resolved issues including the current period then we need to add the current period to the previous periods set:

Sum(
  { PreviousPeriods([Time].CurrentHierarchyMember),
   [Time].CurrentHierarchyMember },
  [Measures].[Issues resolved]
)