Global Dimension Vs Short cut dimension

Hi ,

I gone through the Dimesnions manuals.

I can understand what is the use of Dimensions.

But I could not understand the difference between Global Dimension and Short cut dimension.

Please explain with a suitable example difference between G Dimension and S Dimension .

  1. Please let me know .

Hi Austin,

The main difference is the Global Dimension are posted/stored to a number of the table e.g. G/L Ledger entry. The shortcut dimension are held on sub-table. The Global dimension should be selected carefully and be meaningful to the business. There are more opportunities to filter/analysis by the global dimensions.

Basically you have 8 shortcut dimensions, the first 2 are always global 1 and 2. The other 6 can be manually selected from your dimension on your system. The key is that shortcut dimensions are just normal dimensions, however by being shortcuts you can place them easily on forms, sales order, purchase order, item journal, etc. They are still perfectly normal dimensions, they are just easier to input to, ie, you do not have to go to Line>>dimensions on a form to input them. Basically shortcuts should be allocated to dimensions which are regularly changed at a transaction level.

Hope this is of help

Andrew

As Dave sais the Global Dimensions are transferred into the Entry Tables and the Shortcut Dimensions are transferred into a specific table.

Global Dimensions can be used as parts of FLow Filters in the GL Account , Customer, Vendor and Item tables. So they are best used for grouping and hence reporting on “business units”. For example Cost Centres, Departments or Divisions. This is a fast and powerful tool for analysis.

Shortcut dimensions are not part of the flow filters and you must define and generate Analysis Views to use the analysis / pivot options based on the shortcuts. For example analysis by product family, product line, customer group, sales territory.

Combinations of Global and Shorcust dimensions can all be used in Analysis views. For example giving sales by business unit.

One more example: we use shorcust dimensions to define type of sale (equipment, parts,contract, training, warranty) and product group and then use Global Dimensions to define Divisions (business units) and Cost Centres.

Hope that helps.

Apologies for tieping misteaks.[:)]

Thanks ,

One more issue is why first two short cut dimensions are same as global dimensions .

Please let me know.

There is no difference between global dimensions and shortcut dimensions - so don’t bother.

The only reason for having the “Global Dimensions” in NAV is that NAV only supported two dimensions all together (“Department Code” and “Project Code”) in the good old days. By introducing the new unlimited dimension model with Navision Attain these fields became obsolete and have been reused as “Global Dimension 1” and “Global Dimension 2” in order to leave most forms unchanged where the old Department Code and Project Code fields where used.

The “Shortcut Dimension” fields are just a quicker way to enter dimensions into the system (instead of pressing Ctrl+Shift+D and adding the dimensions needed to the list.)