How to: Understand Attribute Forms in Digital.ai Intelligence

What are Attribute Forms?

In Digital.ai Intelligence all attributes have at least one attribute form. By default, the ID form is the ID that uniquely identifies a record. Other forms can be used to show additional information such as a URL, or alternate formats for date attributes.

As the name suggests this is only for attributes and not for metrics. Most objects have only a single attribute form; however, some have dual attribute forms. To know how many attributes forms a certain attribute has, just right-click on it.

For example, on right-clicking on the attribute App EOS Health, we do not see an option called Display attribute forms which suggests that there is only one attribute form for this object.

In another example, we see that there are two attribute forms (Application ID and Archer ID) but by default, only the Application ID is enabled as the tick mark next to the attribute form.

If we want to enable the second form as well, just click next to Archer ID and that also will be displayed.

Why are attribute forms important?

When linking an attribute between two cubes it is important to know with which attribute form you are linking it.

For example, if we want to join Application ID from this example cube with another cube, click on Application ID in the first cube and select Link to dataset. It will then open a popup as shown below.

It is important to click on Show attribute forms and make sure that you’re linking correctly
if the Application ID attribute has dual forms - e.g. Application ID -> with values like APPID-123 and second form Archer ID with values like -> 123

If we want to use the attribute Application ID from above, with an attribute from another cube, say
App ID which also has dual attribute form of App ID (data in APPID-123 format) and Archer ID (data in 123 format)

It is important that we link the Application ID form from the Application ID attribute with the App ID form from the App ID attribute. So that APPID-123 joins with APPID-123. If we make an incorrect selection here, then we are doing an incorrect join. E.g. trying to join a string like APPID-123 (Application ID/App ID form) with a number 123 (Archer ID form).

Example 1 - Date Attribute

In the following sample Incident cube, the Calendar Month attribute has four attribute forms. The default displayed form is Month Year.

ID is the unique record ID; Lagging count of Month D shows a lagging count of months which is useful in functions and filtering a sliding window of previous months; Month Name Abbreviated allows you to display only the month name.

Example 2 - Incident Number

Dataset 1 (attribute: Incident Number) and Dataset 2 (attribute: Caused By Incident).

Incident Number forms with values are:
ID: INC2039379
URL: SNOW

Caused By Incident forms with values are:
ID: 3992
DESC: INC2039379

When blending these attributes, the Incident Number ID form should link with the Caused By Incident DESC form.