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Hierarchy creation

Abstract

Organize data into parent-child relationships.

The Hierarchy: Geographical Accounts (Hierarchy) tool organizes your data into parent-child relationships based on the inputs you define in each level.

Take a flat account list from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and transform it into a hierarchy file.

Before you create the hierarchy, perform basic manipulation to Remove Empty records. Then, replace states with state codes US States Code (Data) Join Drop Columns (Drop).

Hierarchy tool parameters

The levels are organized so you can start defining the parent-child relationship from the top of the hierarchy.

  • Top level name (optional): Enter your top level name, if it is not already defined.

  • Key: This is the identifier column for the particular level.

  • Name (optional): This is the name or description of the identifier column, i.e. the Key column.

For example, in Hierarchy: Geographical Accounts (Hierarchy) , the "Billing Country" column selected in Level 1 is the parent of the "State Code" column selected in Level 2.

Output

The hierarchy tool takes the key and name column configured in the tool and organizes them into hierarchical data structure. The output contains four columns, "Parent Key", "Key", "Name" and "Level". The "Level" column indicates the source column of the record to allow for debugging.

If there are errors in your input data that would break the hierarchy, an additional two columns, "Valid?" and "Hierarchy error", are added to your output to label problematic records that require review.

In this example, the accounts are segmented in three different ways, by geography, industry and account type (strategic versus commercial), and a hierarchy is created for each segment. These separate data sets are subsequently merged back together using Union Union tools.

You can now export the final output to the downstream system. Export: Hierarchical Account List (Export)