Budgeting Planning & Forecasting

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigate Back to the Source

January 22, 2019 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever been in a situation where you are looking at an IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) view and quickly want to go back to that view? Did you know that PAW allows you to quickly navigate back to the source with a single click?

PAW allows you to easily define the database and cube associated with a cube view by pointing to the top, left corner of the view.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigate back to the source

Once the view is selected, you can then click on the corner to go directly to the source cube.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigating back to the source

This approach allows you to quickly navigate through your Planning Analytics environment with a single click.

IBM Planning Analytics is full of new features and functionality. Not sure where to start? Our team here at Revelwood can help. Contact us for more information at info@revelwood.com. And stay tuned for more Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks weekly in our Knowledge Center and in upcoming newsletters!

Need more help? Learn about our Customer Care options for IBM Planning Analytics & TM1 users.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Collect Feature in Planning Analytics Workspace

January 15, 2019 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can easily copy Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) components across sheets or books?

PAW allows you to use a feature called “Collect” that serves as the equivalent of copying. You can collect an item by selecting the item and then choosing the Collect option on the shortcut bar.

Learn about the collection feature in Planning Analytics Workspace

This option is available for views, visualizations, selectors, images, videos and other items on your PAW sheets.

Once collected, Planning Analytics will give you quick access to use the item again. You can view the items in your collection by selecting the collection button at the top, right corner of your screen and then choosing the option for Collection.

Understanding the collection feature in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, is full of new features and functionality. Not sure where to start? Our team here at Revelwood can help. Contact us for more information at info@revelwood.com. And stay tuned for more Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks weekly in our Knowledge Center and in upcoming newsletters!

New Blog Series: FP&A Done Right

January 11, 2019 by Brian Combs Leave a Comment

I am an “FP&A guy.” I love this stuff. I love every part of it – from the last-minute changes to the long range planning sessions and everything in between. Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of global FP&A and want to share some of my insights and tips and tricks with you all. It has certainly not always gone as planned and I have had my share of missteps. At times, I was convinced that we simply swapped the “What Not to Do” page with the “What to Do” page! That of course, is one way to learn and I will definitely share some of those stories with you.

When colleagues or clients ask questions about best practices or want me to give them some advice on their processes, I have been fond of saying, “Well, FP&A done right is…” So, I thought I would pull together a series of blog posts to share with you several ways that you can do FP&A right. This will include stories from my past experiences, tips and tricks that you can use with your FP&A teams, thoughts on how to organize your department, ways to prepare for a new implementation and other miscellaneous topics. It will focus primarily on People and Process, as I feel those should be the key areas of focus for every FP&A team.

Hopefully, my thoughts will strike a chord with you and you will find something that you can use immediately in your job or it will cause you to take pause and rethink your process to see if there are different actions you could take. As we move through the series, I would love to hear you about how you do FP&A right. What do you think are the keys to success for FP&A? What mistakes have you made that others should avoid? What tips do you have that we could all learn from? If you have a question or a topic for my next blog, please reach out to me.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using Excel to get Client Information

January 8, 2019 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can now easily define your client version of Planning Analytics via an Excel formula?

There are many ways to determine your version of Planning Analytics. Some of these approaches include reviewing log files, right clicking on executable files, or simply clicking on a Help/About option. Planning Analytics version 2.0.0 introduces an easy approach get your client information via the use of an Excel formula.

The formula TM1INFO can be used to return information about your current TM1 client version. The syntax of the formula is:

TM1INFO(parameter)

The formula allows for a series of parameters:

clientversion

Returns the full client version number.

clientversionmajor

Returns the major client version number.

clientversionminor

Returns the minor client version number.

clientversionpatch

Returns fix pack and hotfix number.

For example, the formula =TM1INFO(“clientversionmajor”) may give you a result of 11 whereas =TM1INFO(“clientversion”) would give a more detailed result of 11.0.00200.

This new approach gives you an easy way to monitor your client version and help ensure consistency throughout your organization.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Compatibility of Views and Subsets

December 18, 2018 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that your parameters for VIEWCREATE and SUBSCREATE must be in sync?

Earlier this year we wrote a blog post about a new parameter that can be used with both the VIEWCREATE function and the SUBSETCREATE function. This new parameter allows TurboIntegrator to create temporary components that are deleted when the script closes.

There is, however, an important rule about the compatibility of the settings:

Temporary subsets cannot be assigned to permanent views.

Since a temporary subset is never saved, TM1 will not recognize it as an existing subset. If you attempt to insert a temporary subset into a permanent view then you will receive an error. The error will state that the subset is not found within the dimension and your process will fail.

The new parameter adds value by helping to clean-up your code and by potentially improving performance, but it’s important to ensure the compatibility of each component.

Learn more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Parameters for TurboIntegrator

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Three Reserved Local Variables in TurboIntegrator

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: TurboIntegrator Logging

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

December 11, 2018 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from Revelwood’s Shane Bethea.

Did you know there’s an easy way to create buttons that allow your users to switch sheets in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)? For example, you’ve created multiple sheets in a PAW book and want to give your users the ability to switch back and forth between the different sheets. One simple way to do this is to create buttons on each sheet that point to other sheets.

To do this, click on the ‘create new button’ option at the top of your PAW window. This creates a new button on the sheet.

Now you can use the Button properties menu at the top right of the PAW window to customize the button.

You can edit the General style, such as the fill and border colors of the button.

You can edit Text properties, such as font style, size, and color.

You can then edit the Button target, which will take the user to a sheet in the same book, a different book, or a hyperlink, such as your company’s intranet or some other website.

And finally, you can edit the Button text.

You now have a button on your sheet that points to another sheet in the same book. This approach can be used to easily link multiple sheets and to create easy-to-use navigation throughout your PAW environment.

Get more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Selectors in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing PAW Directory Server on Windows 2016

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Hiding Dimensions in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Duplicating Sheets

December 4, 2018 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from Revelwood’s Shane Bethea.

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) has a new feature that lets you easily duplicate sheets? Have you ever created a template or dashboard in PAW and thought, “This is a great format. I wish I could quickly replicate this sheet to show several different views of the same information?” PAW has a great feature called ‘Duplicate’ that will allow you to duplicate a sheet as many times as you want.

Let’s say you have a dashboard in PAW that shows ‘Units by Quarter’. It’s in a great format and you would like to see other types of information in the same format, but you don’t want to recreate the wheel for each new view. You can use the Duplicate feature to duplicate my original sheet and then change the information displayed on each sheet.

To do this, left click on the sheet tab at the top of your sheet and choose the Duplicate option. This will duplicate the sheet you have selected.

Learn how to duplicate sheets in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

Then, with a few simple clicks, you can change your duplicated sheet to show revenue by quarter.

Duplicating sheets in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

You can expand upon this approach by creating navigation buttons that switch between the sheets, but we’ll save that for a future post.

This simple feature can save you time with report development and help ensure all your reports with similar data have the same look and feel.

Learn more tips on working with IBM Planning Analytics Workspace:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Bookmarks in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Hiding Dimensions in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Setting Default Members

November 27, 2018 by Alex Needham Leave a Comment

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics has a new function called “Default Members?” This is different from default subsets. Default members are what is used if you were to simply drag a dimension into a Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) sheet or a Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) book. Below is what it looks like when dragged into PAx:

Setting default members in Planning Analytics

The default members isn’t as simple as saving a subset, however. It is maintained in a Planning Analytics control cube called “}HierarchyProperties.” You simply pick the dimension that you wish to update, and update the “DefaultMember” for it.

Learn how to set default members in Planning Analytics

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Setting default members

However, if you immediately try to go back and refresh your PAx sheet, what you’ll see is the following:

Understanding default members in Planning Analytics

Nothing changed! There’s an additional step that is required to update the default member of a dimension. You can either:

Restart the server
Run a TI process with the new function called “REFRESHMDXHIERARCHY”

REFRESHMDXHIERARCHY can either be ran for a single dimension, as shown below, or can be run for all dimensions by simply not specifying a dimension.

IBM Planning Analytics: Setting default members

After running this TI process, you can then go back and update your PAx sheet or PAW book and receive the expected results.

Planning Analytics: Setting default members

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Changes to Eight Planning Analytics Server Configuration Parameters

November 20, 2018 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from Revelwood’s Jay Apwah.

Did you know that since IBM Planning Analytics was released on the cloud, there have been changes to IBM Planning Analytics server configuration parameters? New parameters have been introduced, existing ones have had their default values changed, and the behavior upon changing has changed for some others. This blog post briefly describes the eight changes.

New Parameters:

There are a handful of new parameters that have been introduced. Here is one:

UseExcelSerialDate

Setting this parameter to T causes Planning Analytics functions to use Jan 1, 1900 as the initial serial date instead of Jan 1, 1960. Jan 1, 1900 is also the initial serial date that Microsoft Excel uses. The default value for this parameter is F. Set UseExcelSerialDate = T for Planning Analytics functions to use the Excel serial date scheme.

Changes to default value:

MTQ

In previous releases, the default value was F. The default value is now ALL. This parameter allows Planning Analytics to take advantage of multiple processor cores in order to split calculations into multiple parallel threads.

MDXSelectCalculatedMemberInputs

In previous releases, the default value was F. The default value is now T. This parameter protects against unintended suppression of calculated members when the calculation components are not requested in the query results.

Changed from static to dynamic:

Some parameters are now dynamic, which means parameter values can be edited while the Planning Analytics server is running. It takes 60 seconds for the changed parameter value to take effect.

AuditLogOn

This is an optional parameter that enables and disables audit logging. To enable, set AuditLogOn = T

IntegratedSecurityMode

Although this parameter is dynamic, each user must be logged out of all Planning Analytics components it to take effect.

UseLocalCopiesforPublicDynamicSubsets

This parameter improves performance of public dynamic subsets by using local copies of the public subset instead of the public subset itself.

No longer used:

AuditLogMaxTempFileSize

A similar parameter still exists: AuditLogMaxFileSize. Use it to indicate the maximum audit log file size before a new one is created.

ParallelInteraction

This parameter was used for allowing read/write concurrency on the same cube object.

Read additional blog posts on IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Top 5 IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using Attributes

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Upgrading from TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigate Back to the Source

Read more blog posts in the IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Series:

Need more help? Learn about our Customer Care options for IBM Planning Analytics & TM1 users.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Collect Feature in Planning Analytics Workspace

Read more about Planning Analytics & Planning Analytics Workspace:

New Blog Series: FP&A Done Right

Read more about FP&A:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using Excel to get Client Information

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks from the Revelwood team:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Compatibility of Views and Subsets

Learn more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

Get more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Duplicating Sheets

Learn more tips on working with IBM Planning Analytics Workspace:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Setting Default Members

Read more blog posts on IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Changes to Eight Planning Analytics Server Configuration Parameters

Read additional blog posts on IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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