What is a dimension?
A dimension is how you group records so items in a bucket share the same label.
Everyday analogy: Group pens by color, clothes by color, or shoes by size. The dimension is the attribute you group by.
HR examples: Age band, gender, ethnicity, department. Equity-focused teams may monitor average salary by ethnicity over time; leaders may compare pay or headcount by department.
You can show a calculation with no dimension (one overall number) or by a dimension (one value per bucket).
Dimensions in Aragorn are typically built as case statements that tag each person (or record) with a band or category.
Before you start
Ontology fields used in the case logic must exist (for example, date of birth for age bands).
Decide the bucket labels the business will recognize.
Create or configure a dimension
Open Analytics → Manage Analytics.
Open the Dimensions area.
Create or edit a dimension.
Define case logic that assigns each record to exactly one label (or a clear fallback, if your design uses one).
Save the dimension.
Example: age bands
Group employees by age:
When the difference between date of birth and today is between 0 and 20 → tag 0–20
When the difference falls in the next range → tag 20–30
Continue for each band the business needs
After the dimension runs, every employee is tagged with one band. Stories that group by this dimension place all 0–20-year-olds together, all 20–30-year-olds together, and so on.
Note: A 0–20 band can include young workers (for example, late teens). Use drill down if a band looks surprising.
Use dimensions in stories
In a story:
Select a measure or metric.
Optionally set grouping to your dimension.
Choose a visualization that benefits from groups (segment/bar, breakdown/pie, etc.).
Examples:
Average salary overall (no dimension)
Average salary by age band
Average salary by gender or by ethnicity
Dimensions vs hierarchies
A dimension is a flat set of buckets. A hierarchy is a nested structure (for example, country → state → city) for multi-level drill-down.