Add Native “Sort by Alias” Support to DimensionSortOrder, HierarchySortOrder, and Element Ordering UI

Dear team,

IBM Planning Analytics currently supports the following sort types in DimensionSortOrder and HierarchySortOrder:

• ByName

• ByInput

• ByLevel

• ByHierarchy (with Ascending / Descending variants where applicable)

CompSortType remains limited to 'ByInput' and 'ByName' only, with no support for sorting consolidation components (child elements) by alias.

There is no native support for permanently sorting a dimension (or its hierarchies) by an alias attribute (e.g., Description, Business Name, Translated Caption, or any string-based attribute).

While alias-based sorting works in:

• Dynamic MDX subsets (ORDER + Properties("AliasName"))

• Some view displays when an alias is set as caption

this does not persist as the dimension’s default element or component order. Modelers must rely on fragile/performance-heavy workarounds:

• Custom TI processes to re-insert/reorder elements by alias

• Temporarily swapping alias values with principal element names

• Forcing MDX subsets everywhere (impacts legacy apps, picklists, performance)

• Manual reordering in Architect/PAW

Proposed Enhancement
Introduce native alias-based sort types, e.g.:

DimensionSortOrder(DimName, 'ByAlias:AliasAttributeName', 'Ascending')

Alternative variants:

• 'ByAlias' → uses the dimension’s currently defined default alias

• 'ByAlias:MyAliasName' → explicitly specifies the alias/attribute

Extend similarly for CompSortType (child ordering in consolidations) and apply to:

• HierarchySortOrder

• Dimension Element Ordering dialog in Architect, Perspectives, and PAW Modeling Workbench

Business Value

• Intuitive, business-friendly ordering when technical codes are principal names

• Strong multi-language and descriptive reporting support

• Eliminates complex TI/MDX workarounds in many scenarios

• Improves modeling efficiency and reduces technical debt in enterprise models

Priority High — particularly valuable for multi-language deployments, descriptive hierarchies, and dimensions with >1,000 elements where manual/TI reordering is impractical.

Thanks in advance.
With best regards,
Vitalij