Concept: Hiding Dataset Fields
A data administrator can control what fields of a dataset are visible. Hidden fields aren't
visible further along in the development process. Example: if you hide a field in a
stage in a pipeline, that field isn't visible in a later stage. Hidden fields aren't
included in the Prism data source of a published dataset, or in an imported dataset of a
derived dataset.
You might decide to hide a field to:
- Protect sensitive data.In some cases, you might want to hide fields to protect sensitive information. You can hide detail fields, but still allow access to summary information. Suppose that you have a dataset containing employee salary information. You might want to hide salaries per person, but still enable analysts to view average salary by department.
- Hide unpopulated or sparse data fields.You might have fields in your raw data that didn't have any data collected. The data collected might be too sparse to be valid for analysis. Suppose that a web application has a placeholder field for comments, but it was never implemented on the website so the comments field is empty. Hiding the field prevents analysts from using a field with mostly null values when they analyze the data.
- Use a calculated field instead of the fields that it's based on.You might add a Prism calculated field to transform the values of the raw data. You want your users to analyze the transformed values, not the raw values. Suppose that you have a "return reason code" field where the reason codes are numbers (1, 2, and 3). You could transform the numbers to the actual reason information (such as Didn't Fit, Changed Mind, and Poor Quality), so the data is more usable during analysis.
- Hide Prism calculated fields that do interim processing.As you work on your dataset to cleanse and transform the data, you might need to add interim Prism calculated fields to achieve a final result. These fields are necessary to do a processing step, but aren't intended for final consumption. You can hide these working fields so they don't clutter later stages or the dataset details.
Hide a field in the Manage Fields stage by unselecting the check box for a field. Although you
can also hide a field in the inspector panel, it's a best practice to hide fields in the
Manage Fields stage.