Hierarchical collation (sorting) or not?

When you have a crosstab in TARGIT you can sort the rows (even as a consumer) by clicking the arrow symbol next to the column header.

Here is an example of a table showing some salespeople in the initial sorting order (which is ascending).

As you hover the Salesperson column header you notice the arrow.

By clicking the arrow multiple times, you can toggle between:

• no sorting order (initial sequence of data),
• ascending (arrow up) and
• descending (arrow down).

So now we've clicked a couple of times and the order is descending:

This obviously works fine - but what about hierarchies? 

When hierarchies are involved, you will discover that "Hierarchical collation" is set by default - which means that sorting takes place within each group - see example below:

Notice here that data is sorted descendingly by Salesperson (arrow down), however the sorting seems to take place within each sales managers group. This is default behaviour.

And it also applies to user defined hierarchies (where you place multiple attributes on the vertical axis) as seen below:

If you prefer to have sorting that doesn't consider the hierarchy, you need to disable hierarchical collation.

Important: This is something a designer can do for each object, and the choice the designer makes will decide how sorting works.

By right clicking any column header (notice you need to be in design mode) the hierarchical collation option becomes visible:

If you disable hierarchical collation (just by clicking it), you will see this behaviour when hierarchies are involved:

Now the sorting will disregard the hierarchy and sort the salesperson attribute across different sales managers areas.

So make your choice in each case - hierarchical collation (sorting) or not?