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In a perfect world, your master data and master data management (MDM) is set up so everyone can see things how they want. Categories of Items, Regions, etc, etc are all defined in your dimension data, and you can create hierarchies, etc that make sense and everyone is happy. But, this is not a perfect world 🙂

Some users want to see “their” items, “their” regions, etc. And they ask and ask for you to add it to the cube, but you have to deny them. Why? Because if you add their named set, you have to add all of them that are requested, that don’t make sense to 99% of the other people using the cube.

You probably could even go about doing some crazy MDX or something in your cube to create the named sets per user, but then you still have to manage it all in your MDX script in your SSAS project.

I blogged a while ago about the OLAP Pivot Table Extensions on CodePlex , which, is an awesome toolkit, but it is geared around Calculated Measures. I downloaded the code and took a gander here and there and it would be pretty easily modified to work with Named Sets (change xlCalculatedMember to xlCalculatedSet , add a radio button on adding a new calc, etc) – but, its in VS2005, and I have VS2008 (2005 BIDS, not C#), and right now I don’t feel like mucking around with that, maybe someone with more time, and more ambition can do it 🙂 – Or maybe when I get some free time I will take a look, but for now here is a solution.

I took the idea outlined at the bottom half of this blog http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2008/02/05/common-questions-around-excel-2007-OLAP-PivotTables.aspx  about named sets and creating them in macros..

Sub AddNamedSet()

Dim pvt As PivotTable
Dim strName As String
Dim strFormula As String
Dim cbf As CubeField

Set pvt = Sheet1.PivotTables("PivotTable1")
strName = "[My Mountain Bikes]"
strFormula = "[Product].[Product Categories].[Bikes].[Mountain Bikes].children"
pvt.CalculatedMembers.Add Name:=strName, Formula:=strFormula, Type:=xlCalculatedSet
Set cbf = pvt.CubeFields.AddSet(Name:="[My Mountain Bikes]", Caption:="Mountain Bikes")

End Sub

That macro is pretty sweet, you can add a named set to your workbook. But, its pretty static. You have to edit the macro every time you want to add more items, it doesn’t update or remove the sets you might have, etc.

What I whipped up quick was an updated macro that lets you build customizable named sets based on data in another worksheet in your Excel file (you can imaging it coming from other sources – another Excel file, a SQL table, etc, etc). I did this with a cube we use at work, but for this example, I changed it to pull off the AdventureWorks DW SSAS DB, AdventureWorks Cube, (SQL 2005 edition)

First off, here is the macro: 

Text File of Macro: Custom_NamedSets_Macro.txt</a

Excel 2007 Workbook with Macro: Custom_NamedSets.xlsm

Sub AddNamedSet()

    ' data sheet top row must be set name [Set Name] and then item numbers after
    Dim sourceData As Worksheet
    Set sourceData = Worksheets("Data")

    Dim strName As String
    ' get the name of the set, including brackets []
    strName = sourceData.Range("A1").Value

    ' used range is the whole column, rangeVals is the item numbers
    Dim usedRange As Range
    Dim rangeVals As Range
    Dim maxRow As Integer

    Set usedRange = sourceData.usedRange

    maxRow = usedRange.Rows.Count

    ' get the item numbers
    Set rangeVals = sourceData.Range("A2:A" & maxRow)

    Dim strFormula As String
    Dim i As Integer

    ' loop through and build forumla
    strFormula = "'{"

    For i = 1 To rangeVals.Count
       strFormula = strFormula & rangeVals(i, 1) & ","
    Next i

    ' remove last comma and add last curly and tick
    strFormula = Left(strFormula, Len(strFormula) - 1) & "}'"

    ' get pivot table object
    Dim pvt As PivotTable
    Set pvt = Sheet1.PivotTables(1)

    ' Add a calculated member titled "[MySet]"
    pvt.CalculatedMembers.Add Name:=strName, Formula:=strFormula, Type:=xlCalculatedSet

    ' Add a set to the CubeField object.
    Dim cbf As CubeField
    Set cbf = pvt.CubeFields.AddSet(Name:=strName, Caption:=Replace(Replace(strName, "[", ""), "]", ""))


End Sub

Sub DeleteNamedSets()

    Dim pvt As PivotTable
    Set pvt = Sheet1.PivotTables(1)

    Dim i As Integer

    For i = 1 To pvt.CalculatedMembers.Count
        pvt.CalculatedMembers.Item(i).Delete
    Next i
    pvt.RefreshTable

End Sub

Now, this was a 15-20 minute VBA hack. It could really use some cleanup, but works. What I did to make it work with Advendture Works was just put the whole “member” string in the data tab of the spreadsheet. In my case at work, I just was using item number and had some of the member string in the macro. But really you can see you could add a named set on each column, or something, you really could make this powerful. And since I added the delete, if they re-run the add, it will recreate the set, so they can modify the data and re-add. It should be expanded on and made a little more robust, but you get the idea. Now, think of how you could use this with your cubes, and how you could get your user’s thinking about ways to use custom named sets!