Yesterday we reviewed the functions that Monarch offers that help us extract accurate data and enhance the model’s functionality significantly.
Today on day 11 of the 30 Days to Become a Better Monarch Modeler series we’ll look at a convenience feature that is essentially a packaged collection of functions. The Address Block Wizard does a great job of sheltering us from some pretty significant complexity and its interface style makes the job of breaking up address data positively simple.
In fact it’s so easy to use that this should be a brief post today. It’s ease of use like this that’s built into Monarch that reminds me of the Alternatives to Monarch Software post.
No Potions Necessary
Lets assume that all of the address information including possibly a customer name is included in a single multi-line field (likely captured with the Advanced feature to “End Field On” the “End of left justification”), and we need to derive sales totals by city from a report that only provides subtotals when the customer number changes.
In the Table window, click the toolbar button that looks like an envelope. This brings up the list of Address Block definitions. Click New… to launch the wizard and let it do its magic.
Now there are just a few required steps:
- Give the definition a unique name, like Customers. This name can, but need not, match the name of an existing Table field.
- Review the default address styles to see that your content matches one of the applicable postal code formats, and click Next.
- Click on the Customer field and click the Add button to include Customer in the Selected Fields list. If we don’t have a single field that can provide a complete address, add multiple fields to the Select Fields list as necessary. Click Next.
- Select all of the fields that you want Monarch to build using the inputs provided. There can be up to six address lines, plus City, Region (like state or province), Postal Code (zip code) and Country. Also available is an Error Code field. Monarch generates non-zero error numbers if it suspects that it wasn’t able to build a proper address for a particular record if this box is checked. Notice that field names are automatically assigned as items are checked, and that we can edit these generated names if desired.
- Click Finish to have Monarch get to work building fields.
- Click OK to save the address block definition in the model. This is important! If you click Cancel, you’ll lose all that effort.
Monarch is really quite good at this task, but depending upon the data that it has to work with, it’s not always perfect, so it’s a good practice to always include the error code in the address block definition. Refer to the online help to decipher what the error code numbers really mean.
And that’s it! Nothing difficult, but the results are terrific.
Your Task for Today
Now that generating address data is as easy as 1-2-3, it’s time to take serious advantage of it, and depending upon your comfort and experience level with Monarch (and whether you have the Standard or Pro edition of the software) here are your task choices:
- If you have the Pro edition, build an analysis that summarizes transactions of your choosing on either City or Region data, using two report sources, only one of which has the locale data. Choose reports that have a common element such as a customer number or vendor number. The goal is to build an analysis mechanism that doesn’t exist in either report in and of itself.
- Alternatively, you can work with a single report to derive something as straightforward as the number of occurrences of each City, State combination or some other useful metric that is important to you or your organization, so long as it’s based on data provided to you by the address block wizard.
A Roadmap for Success
Once you’re freed from the complexity of acquiring geographic data that can dovetail into other data that is already available in other reports or systems, there’s no end to the powerful tools and analyses that you can build.
The Address Block feature does anything but block you. Instead it works with you and facilitates your efforts to excel with Monarch.
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Continue your commitment to Become a Better Monarch Modeler with Part 12 of the series, or review Part 10.
