tim laqua dot com Thoughts and Code from Tim Laqua

SSAS Cube Action: Cells Target type, URL Action type Example

Originally, we were charged with figuring out how to display SSAS cube measure descriptions via ToolTip in Excel 2007. If that's your plan, forget it - after some reading up on the interwebs, it appears that Excel doesn't even request the Description property. Additionally, if you want to add a description to Calculated Members, you have to hack it in (yuck).

So we went with a simple, albeit relatively crude (but effective), alternative - implementing a URL action for Cells so users can easily link out to a definition of the measure they're looking at.

Create a new action in your cube (Open up the cube definition, Actions tab) and configure similar to this:

Name: View Member Definition
 
Action Target
    Target Type: Cells
    Target object: All cells
 
Action Content
    Type: URL
    Action expression: "http://i.domain.com/doc/Defs.aspx#" 
                       + [Measures].CurrentMember.Name
 
Additional Properties
    Invocation: Interactive
    Description: View Member Definition
    "View Definition Of " + [Measures].CurrentMember.Name + "..."
    Caption is MDX: True

When you're finished, it should look something like this:

For a possible way to implement the aforementioned Definitions.aspx, check out http://timlaqua.com/2009/03/scrolling-to-and-highlighting-anchor-target-via-javascript/ - which describes an early endpoint we used for this project.