Manage hierarchies

Lumel EPM provides a number of options to manage hierarchies such as expanding or collapsing row/column hierarchies to specified levels, descendants and more.

Currently, in a native Power BI matrix, you cannot expand or collapse columns freely as you can do with rows. With Lumel EPM, you can expand/collapse specific columns to reveal their children, just as we can do with the row hierarchies in the native Power BI visual.

1. Row hierarchies

In this example, the hierarchy in rows is Brand -> Category -> Variant -> Multipack.

You can expand/collapse individual rows using the expand/collapse icons . In the image below, you can see that Aqua Splash is extended to the last level, while Artisan Ale, Cosmic Craft Brews, and Eclipse Light remain collapsed.

Row hierarchy

Lumel EPM also provides a number of options for expanding/collapsing all branches, expanding/collapsing to a specific level etc. To access these options, mouse over any row, and click on the Row gripper(hamburger menu) -> Expand/Collapse.

Available actions

a) Expand

You can perform the following Expand actions.

i. Expand all

Expand all items in the rows to reveal the lowest level across all branches.

For example, click on any row and 'Expand all', all the rows till the Multipack level will be revealed.

ii. Expand level

The immediate descendants for the selected level are shown for all the branches.

For example, if you select the row Artisan Ale and 'Expand Level', the categories will be revealed for all the brands.

iii. Expand descendants

All the descendants for the selected row are shown.

For example, if you select the row Artisan Ale and 'Expand descendants', the categories variants till multipack are expanded only for the Artisan Ale row.

iv. Expand specific level

The descendants are expanded to a specific level for all the branches.

For example, if you select the row Artisan Ale and 'Expand variant', the categories and variants are expanded for all the brands.

Various level of expansion is shown

b) Collapse

You can also perform the following Collapse actions.

Various Collapse option

i. Collapse all

Collapse all items in the rows to reveal only the highest level across all branches.

For example, click on any row and 'Collapse all', only the brands will be shown.

ii. Collapse descendants

All the descendants for the selected row are hidden.

For example, if you select the row AquaSplash and 'Collapse descendants', the categories and variants are hidden only for the AquaSplash row.

c) Hide hierarchy

You can add a layer of abstraction to the report by choosing whether to display the child nodes under a hierarchy.

i. Hiding child rows

To hide all the child rows contributing to a parent row, click on the row gripper for the parent row and select the 'Hide icon & children' option from the 'Action' section.

Hide child nodes in a hierarchy

The child rows under the 'Artisan Ale' level have been hidden.

child rows under the 'Artisan Ale' level have been hidden.

To reinstate the hidden child rows, select the 'Show icon & children for current row' option from the row gripper context menu.

Reinstating hidden rows

ii. Disabling expand/collapse for levels in the hierarchy

You can also prevent users from expanding and collapsing the hierarchy by hiding the expand icon. This can be achieved by clicking on the row gripper for the parent node and selecting the 'Hide icon for level' option from the 'Action' section.

Hide icon for level

Notice how the expand/collapse icon has been removed for the hierarchy.

Hierarchy in expanded state

To reinstate the icon, select the 'Show icon for level' option from the row gripper context menu.

Expand icon is enabled

2. Column hierarchies

In this example, the hierarchy in columns is Year -> Quarter -> Month.

You can expand/collapse individual columns using the expand/collapse icons . In the image below, you can see that Year 2025-> Q1 is fully expanded to show the Months, while the Year 2024 remains collapsed.

Column hierarchy

To access the other expand/collapse options, mouse over the category names on the top-left of the table (Year, Quarter name, and month_short_name). On clicking the hamburger menu, you can see a list of options. From this menu, you can perform the following actions:

Hamburger menu

1. Expand all

Expand all the Years in the columns to the lowest level (Month name) across all branches

2. Collapse all

Collapse all the levels in the columns to show only the Years

3. Go to level

This option is useful when there are more than 2 hierarchy levels. Here you can expand all branches to a particular level, for example, you can expand all the years to their quarters.