Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Adaptive Displays – Sheets

March 22, 2023 by Ben Alcock

There are many different reasons you might want to customize how the sheet you are viewing is displayed in Workday Adaptive Planning. Maybe you only have data for just a few months. Maybe you want to sum a row of values and don’t want quarter or year totals included in the sum. Good news – it’s very easy to adjust what months, dimensions, and other elements appear on the page.

Adaptive Planning has three sheet types: Modeled, Cube, and Standard. All of them have this little Display Options button

at the top of the sheet, but aside from time, all the options for each are different.

Time

Here is where you can adjust the time periods to be displayed, and by what time-strata. In the example above we see drop-down to select what calendar we are using. Here is where you can select a different time strata, such as calendar year. You can also customize the periods by checking/unchecking the month, quarter-totals, or year-totals for each year. A nifty feature is also suppressing 0s – if you don’t want gaps in your data and you have the ability to save your current view as default for all your Adaptive users.

Modeled Sheets

Aside from the time options, Modeled sheets only have two other display sections – filter rows and hide columns.

These slim down the data so you can focus on specific dimensions or levels.

Cube Sheets

Cube sheets have the most customizability. In addition to time, they also have display options for accounts, levels, and all the dimensions on the sheet.

Like the other Modeled sheet options, these are to slim down the data to specifics. This is extremely helpful with data validation. They also have a tool called Sparklines.

We will delve into more detail on sparklines in a upcoming blog post. Sparklines are essentially a way to visualize trends in your data and even make on-sheet edits by dragging the trend line up or down. This is useful when you have a recurring value that’s adjusted by a varying percentage and you want to forecast different trends.

Standard Sheets

On top of time, standard sheets also have sparklines and another useful display option called version comparison.

Here you can set versions to display against each other for comparison.

That’s it for the ins and outs of Display options on sheets!

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Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Alternate Calendars (Time Strata)

March 8, 2023 by Ben Alcock

Workday Adaptive Planning is a great planning tool due to its suitability for organizations in a wide variety of industries. However, one challenge is the inability to have multiple calendars to plan by. Some companies need this feature in order to accurately create budgets and forecasts.

The exciting news is that Adaptive Planning’s most recent release now lets the user import an alternate calendar!

This new release allows the user to import up to three alternate calendars. To do so, the user must go to the Time selection under the Modeling section.

By using the TimeStructure spreadsheet, the user can add columns that map the leaf strata of the original calendar to the new alternate calendar.

When adding in a new calendar it is important to make sure that there is at least one common time strata, or fork, to share with the default calendar. Typically, this would be the month.

Additionally, when creating a new calendar, the user must also make sure that it shares the smallest strata with the original calendar.

In the picture above you can see an example where the company has a fiscal calendar that begins in April and ends in March, and a standard calendar that follows January through December.

Notice how the first code, label, and short name columns all have the shared month intersection populated with the dates. This is the lowest fork in the example that enables Adaptive Planning to line up these calendars together.

This is a great new feature that will help many Adaptive Planning clients!

Visit Revelwood’s Knowledge Center for our Adaptive Insights Tips & Tricks or sign up here to get our Adaptive Insights Tips & Tricks delivered directly to your inbox. Not sure where to start with Adaptive Insights? Our team here at Revelwood can help! Contact us info@revelwood.com for more information

This blog post was co-authored by Ben Alcock, associate consultant at Revelwood and Julia Seelin, associate consultant at Revelwood.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: How to Create Dimension Attributes

February 22, 2023 by Ben Alcock

Dimension attributes in Workday Adaptive Planning are very helpful when we want to further separate data from the same dimension or give a hierarchy to a flat dimension. In this example, I use the dimension “New Jersey Apples.” We can tag each dimension value with an attribute that lets us know if it’s either a red apple or a green apple.

Select the three lines from next to the Workday W and navigate to modeling and dimension attributes. Click the Create new dimension attribute button

at the top of the sheet and name your attribute. In this example, our attribute name is apple colour.

Next, we need to populate our attribute values. Like when creating dimensions [add link to previous blog post], there are three methods for doing this.

The first is to do it manually. Select the create new attribute value button

from the top of the sheet. Next, create each attribute with a name and unique code. For example, red and green.

The second method is via an import. To do this, we need an import template. Click the Import dimension attribute structure button

and download an import template. Open it, and in column A on the first row only, write the name of your overall dimension. In the next row, in columns E and F, include the name and unique dimension value code from your data source. Save and return to Adaptive Planning. Choose your new file and click import. If all goes well you’ve saved a ton of time populating your new dimension attributes!

The third approach is by far the easiest and fastest method. Select the check box Data import automatically creates new dimension attribute values:

The parent dimension attribute is already created. Tagging the dimension values you’re going to import with a nonexistent dimension attribute value will cause Adaptive Planning to automatically populate your new dimension attribute.

And that’s it for creating dimensions attributes!

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: How to Create a Dimension

February 8, 2023 by Ben Alcock

Dimensions are a key element of Workday Adaptive Planning. Creating a dimension is very easy. Here are some approaches to create dimensions in Workday Adaptive Planning.

The first thing to consider is hierarchy. It is Revelwood’s best practice to keep dimensions flat, meaning with no hierarchy at all, and leave that to dimension attributes. (I will cover more in detail in an upcoming blog post.) We like to keep them flat in order to tag them with dimension attributes. This is very useful when further breaking down dimensions by different categories. If we need dimensions to be in a hierarchy, we build that structure as attributes and keep dimensions flat at the leaf most level.

To add a dimension in Adaptive Planning, select the three lines and navigate to modeling and click Dimensions. At the top of the screen notice this little Create new dimension button.

Click it and give your new dimension a name and unique code.

Now from here there’s a couple ways to add values to your new dimension.

The first is to add it manually. Select your new dimension and click this icon next to the previous create new dimension button, the Create new dimension value button.

From here, give each dimension value a name and a unique code. This could take a while, which is why I recommend one of the next two options instead of the manual process.

The second possible way is via an import. First we need an import template. Click this Import dimension structure button

and download an import template. Open it, and in column A on the first row only, write the name of your overall dimension.

In the next row in column F and G, include the unique dimension value code and name from your data source.

Save and return to Adaptive Planning. Choose your new file and click import. If all goes well you’ve saved a ton of time populating your new dimension.

The third choice is by far the easiest and fastest method. To import dimension values select the check box Data import automatically creates new dimension values:

The parent dimension is already created. Tagging data you’re going to import with a nonexistent dimension value will cause Adaptive Planning to automatically populate your new dimension.

And that’s it for creating dimensions!

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Reusable Reports

November 9, 2022 by Ben Alcock

As a relative newcomer to Workday Adaptive Planning, I find the Reusable reports function particularly useful.

The ability to create a Reusable Report is a function in Adaptive Planning that preserves the elements and format of a previously saved Matrix Report. Row and column segments that have been organized and formatted are added to the element pane and are able to be dragged and dropped on any new Matrix Report to quickly add structure.

A good use for Reusable Reports is when building multiple reports for a version that occurs during the same time period. After formatting this once, you can easily drag and drop each segment to a new report and your time and version structure will carry over. Another use is combining reports – it’s as easy as saving one or both as reusable and then adding it to the bottom of the other to display them together.

Here is how to save an already created Matrix Report as reusable and use it to quickly create another similarly structured report.

The example report we’re going to use displays the revenue of each product group and total Product Revenue for the year 2019, in the Version: “Last Year Budget – Approved”.

Below shows the behind-the-scenes Report Editor for the above report.

Notice how the columns are expanded to show each quarter as well as the full year total. This is a format choice made in the Elements Pane that we want to reuse in the next report we build.

To make this a Reusable Report, first find the report on the Reports Overview page.

Right click on the report and select “Add to Reusable Reports”

Now we’re going to create a new Matrix Report that displays the maintenance revenue of each account and total maintenance revenue for the same year and version as the 2019 Product Revenue report.

Create a new Matrix Report and look at the bottom of the Elements Pane on the left, notice the section for Reusable Reports.

From here, expand the report you want to reuse and drag and drop the desired elements/segments. In this example, we want to reuse the column segment and its formatting.

Add to the row axis the element you wish to display on your new report, in this case we want the account, Maintenance Revenue.

Select Save and Run, and just like that, you’ve used a Reusable Report to quickly create a similar but different report that follows the same time and version formatting as the other!

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Adaptive Displays – Sheets

Time

Modeled Sheets

Cube Sheets

Standard Sheets

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Alternate Calendars (Time Strata)

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: How to Create Dimension Attributes

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: How to Create a Dimension

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Reusable Reports

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

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