IBM Cognos TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Working with Two Time Zones in Google Calendar

October 4, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Do you regularly work with others that are in a different time zone? If so, how often have you heard your counterpart tell you to “just determine my time by adding X hours to yours.” And how often have you messed up that simple math by subtracting X or by adding Y?

If you use Google calendars, then you don’t have to do this math each time you attempt to schedule a meeting. Google’s calendar allows you to show two time zones in your sidebar.

To enable this setting, click on the settings icon and select the option for Time Zone. From there, enable the option to “Display secondary time zone” and then select the time zone.

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Once defined, you will see two time zones on the left side of your calendar.

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And Google also allows you to expand this further. If you don’t remember what time zone correlates with each GMT setting, you can also customize each header label.

This approach will help you quickly define time zones for your coworkers while also avoiding their jokes about your basic math skills!

Revelwood has worked with IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 for more than 27 years. We’ve partnered with hundreds of companies on the design, development, maintenance and updates of IBM Planning Analytics applications, across every industry. Have a challenge with Planning Analytics / TM1? We can help you!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Filter Option in Set Editor

September 27, 2022 by Dillon Rossman

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) update 76 introduced a new filter option in the set editor? Previously, you could create a filter or multiple filters and the set would show the members that meet the criteria for every filter. Now you can have the set show any member that matches any of the filters.

Within the set editor, when you click filter you will now see two options, “Match all of the following” and “Match any of the following”.

“Match all of the following” is the equivalent of what previously existed. “Match any of the following” is new functionality. For a simple example, I will try to filter this set to show months containing “Jan” or “Feb”.

Using the “Match all of the following” functionality this will return nothing because no month will contain “Jan” AND “Feb.

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However, if I use the new “Match any of the following” functionality to search for members that contain “Jan” OR “Feb” I will get the results I am looking for.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: 21/21/21

September 20, 2022 by Lee Lazarow

Some of you may remember an Excel feature that we wrote about a while back, which explained how the DATE function will convert invalid dates into real ones. For example, DATE(2020,7,35) will be converted to August 4, 2020, since there are not 35 days in July.

Here is where the fun begins!

This week includes the 21^st day of the month of September
September is the 9^th month of this year, which is also the 21^st month of last year
Last year was 2021

Put this all together and we have another special event happening this week …

On September 21, 2022,

the resulting date will be 21/21/21

And if we take it a step further …

At 9:21p and 21 seconds on 9/21/2022,

the resulting time will be 21:21:21 on 21/21/21

This is why we love Excel!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Beginning to Explore the Set Editor in Planning Analytics for Excel

September 13, 2022 by Marc Assenza

The IBM Planning Analytics Set Editor is the equivalent to the TM1 Subset Editor for Architect and Perspectives, but with expanded functionality. Getting started with the set editor is as simple as double clicking on a dimension within your exploration.

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In this example, I double clicked on the Company dimension. Right away you can see that it is organized via a left and right pane where the left side represents what is available within the dimension and the right side shows what is currently selected, or the current set.

The left side now contains two drop downs: one for hierarchies and one for members. The members selection allows you to choose a series of pre-built categories along with existing subsets.

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After selecting the members to be inserted into the current set, you can place them into the right side’s Current Set by simply clicking on the Insert button between the panes. Click the “Apply and close” button your newly selected member(s) will show within your exploration.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Garbage Memory

August 23, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

I recently had a customer ask me why Windows was showing a much larger memory footprint than what was expected (based on their cube sizes). After further analyzing their model, we saw a large amount of garbage memory … which led to the question “what is garbage memory?”

As you know, IBM Planning Analytics uses various approaches to minimize the amount of RAM needed for a model. PA (Planning Analytics) is very good about only taking what it needs to support views, calculations, and processing. However, I sometimes like to compare PA to a small child – it is very good at only taking what it needs, but it’s not so good at giving it back when it’s done. This is does this on purpose since results are stored for future reference, thereby providing faster results for your users. The excess memory that was being and is no longer needed is called garbage memory.

You can determine how much memory is being used by enabling performance monitoring and reviewing the }StatsForServer control cube.

So how do you release (or reset) the amount of memory used by PA? You can do this by simply recycling your PA server. Revelwood recommends recycling your service at least once per week. Not only will this reset the amount of memory used on the machine, but it will also help with other basic maintenance tasks such as ensuring your transaction log data is properly written to disk.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Background Colors for Data and Header Cells

August 9, 2022 by Dillon Rossman Leave a Comment

Did you know that update 76 of IBM Planning Analytics allows you to customize background colors for data and header cells within your Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) views?

To customize these colors, click on a view within a page in PAW and open the “Properties” menu.

Within the “Properties” menu expand “Text Properties”. Within this section you will notice three subsections: “Data Cell”, “Row Header”, and “Column Header”. Each of these sections includes a setting called “Fill Color”, which defines the background color.

In this example, I will update the data cell background color to a light blue.

The data cells are now a light blue.

The same can be accomplished for the row and column headers, giving complete control over the colors in your PAW view.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Adding and Editing Connection URLs in Planning Analytics for Excel

August 2, 2022 by Marc Assenza Leave a Comment

Do you know how to add a new Connection URL or Edit an existing Connection URL in Planning Analytics for Excel? Here are the steps to follow:

Adding a Connection URL

Once Planning Analytics for Excel has been launched, go into the IBM Planning Analytics ribbon click on the “Connect” button. Click the “New Connection” button within the drop down menu.

The following window will appear.

Datasource type – This is a dropdown containing two selections: IBM Planning Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics. For this example, we are connecting to IBM Planning Analytics.

Connection URL – The connection URL connects Planning Analytics for Excel to a Planning Analytics Workspace server. If you are connecting to a local installation of Planning Analytics Workspace, this will contain either the IP address of your Planning Analytics Workspace server or the machine name of your Planning Analytics Workspace server, examples could look as follows:

http://12.345.77.89
http://mypawserver.mycompany.com

If you are connecting to an IBM Cloud Planning Analytics Workspace Server, the connection URL would look something like this:

https://mycompanyname.planning-analytics.ibmcloud.com/

Friendly name – The friendly name is a user defined setting in the sense that you give it a name that people within the organization would recognize, and it would be something meaningful to them, an example could be:

mycompanyname DEV Server

Once the information is entered, press the Test Connection button to confirm your connection. A successful connection will result in the following message:

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Once completed, click the “Save” button.

Editing a Connection URL

Occasionally you may need to edit an existing connection URL. This may entail a change to your internal “Friendly name” or a change to the IP address of the server. Here are the steps to follow:

Once Planning Analytics for Excel has been launched, go into the IBM Planning Analytics ribbon click on the “Options” button.

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Click on the option for “IBM” on the left-hand side of the window.

You will see a list of all your existing connections. Select the connection you want to edit and click the “Edit” button at the bottom of the screen. You can then make the necessary adjustments and retest the connection.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel DELET Function

July 26, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

A while back I wrote a blog about the SCAN function which showed how you can search for specific characters and then combine this with the SUBST formula to create new sets of text. But what if you wanted an easier way to simply skip some characters within the string? This can be done with the DELET function.

The DELET function is used to delete a set of characters from within a string. The syntax of the command is:

DELET (string, start, number)

String = the source text string
Start = the character where deletion will begin
Number = the number of characters to delete

For example:

DELETE (‘phone’, 2, 3) returns ‘pe’

This function can be used to perform tasks such as removing dashes in between an element code number and name or removing a prefix from a list of elements. This will simplify your code by allowing you to simply ignore some text instead of merging two substrings together.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Chart Show Totals

July 19, 2022 by Dillon Rossman Leave a Comment

One of IBM Planning Analytics’ purposes is to serve as an aggregation tool. As a result, many of your explorations consist of a series of base level elements plus a total. Here is an example of a simple exploration that shows details of a list of companies plus a total:

This exploration can easily be converted into a pie chart by simply changing the visualization to a pie chart. Here is what the pie chart will look like:

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However, the concept of aggregations has now shifted into a detriment since the total will always appear as 50% of the chart! Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) allows you to hide the totals by defining properties within each field of your chart. You can do this via the following steps:

While in Edit mode, single click on your pie chart widget.

Select the option for “Fields” at the top, right corner. Not all visualizations use fields, so this may appear blank if you have not yet converted your widget to a pie chart.

Click the three vertical dots associated with the dimension that should not include totals. In my example, the segment is associated with the company dimension.

Select the option to Hide Totals.

Once selected, the same pie chart will look like this:

This approach will allow you to properly define when you want a total to appear, thereby making your chart results beneficial to the user.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Displaying Percentages on a Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) Pie Chart

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Pie Percent or Value?

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Explorations – Row & Column Headers

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Working with Two Time Zones in Google Calendar

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Filter Option in Set Editor

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: 21/21/21

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Beginning to Explore the Set Editor in Planning Analytics for Excel

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Garbage Memory

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Background Colors for Data and Header Cells

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Adding and Editing Connection URLs in Planning Analytics for Excel

Adding a Connection URL

Editing a Connection URL

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel DELET Function

Read More IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Chart Show Totals

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