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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.

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The following window will appear.

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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.

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: 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 Revelwood 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:

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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: Excel MAXIFS and MINIFS

July 12, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Many of you know that Excel’s MAX function will define the largest value within a range. And many of you also know that Excel’s SUMIFS function will allow you to merge IF checks into your sum formulas. But did you know that Excel has a function called MAXIFS which merges these two concepts together?

The MAXIFS function is used to determine the largest number within a range that satisfies one or more conditions.

The syntax of the function is:

=MAXIFS (max_range, criteria_range1, criteria1 [,criteria_range2, criteria2] [..])

Max_range
- This is required
- This defines the range to search
Criteria_range1
- This is required
- This defines the range to perform the IF check
Criteria1
- This is required
- This defines the criteria of the IF check
Criteria_range2 and Criteria2
- These are optional
- These allow you to have multiple IF checks
- You can have more than 2 criteria

The following example shows how to define the maximum value for Lee.

Other iterations of this formula include MINIFS, AVERAGEIFS and COUNTIFS.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Escape Character

July 5, 2022 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

Have you ever been in a situation where you have an element name with an apostrophe (or two) in IBM Planning Analytics? Examples of this might entail last names such as “O’Connor” or “O’Sullivan”?

Although IBM best practices specify that the apostrophe is a special character to avoid in object and element names, in many instances you’ll see an apostrophe used in your data source (especially in names and brand names).

Planning Analytics confuses the apostrophe as a single quote … which is a special character used to define literal strings. You can resolve this situation by using an “escape character.” An escape character invokes an alternative interpretation on the characters which follow.

The Planning Analytics escape character sequence defines 2 single quotes together as the equivalent of 1 single quote.

Example:

‘O’’Connor’ will display as ‘O’Connor’

This escape sequence can be used in both Rules and Turbo Integrator processes.

This approach will allow your use of O’Connor to properly work instead of causing you to convert it into “oh darn”!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Dynamic Subsets Based on a Cube

June 28, 2022 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

Did you know you can use MDX to create dynamic subsets based on cube values in IBM Planning Analytics? In our example we will only show companies with net sales greater than 30,000,000 in the selected year.

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An MDX statement that can provide this result may look something like this:

{FILTER({TM1SUBSETALL([bpmCompany])},[bpmFinance].([bpmScenario].CurrentMember, [bpmDepartment].CurrentMember,[bpmAccount].[Net Sales],[bpmCurrency].CurrentMember,[bpmPeriod].CurrentMember,[bpmFinance_Msr].[Balance Post-Alloc]) > 30000000 )}

The components of this statement are:

FILTER({abc}),[Cube].([Dim1].[Value],[Dim2].[Value]…) > 30000000 )
- Filter set ABC to only show members with a value greater than 30,000,000 for the intersection defined in the section after the comma
TM1SUBSETALL([bpmCompany])
- Grab all members within the bpmCompany dimension
[bpmFinance]
- The cube being used for the data
([bpmScenario].CurrentMember, [bpmDepartment].CurrentMember,[bpmAccount].[Net Sales],[bpmCurrency].CurrentMember,[bpmPeriod].CurrentMember,[bpmFinance_Msr].[Balance Post-Alloc])
- The intersection used to get the cube value
- This is like a DBRW formula in the sense that we are defining a view by listing every dimension and providing a member within that dimension
  - CurrentMember will grab whatever element is selected in the cube view for that dimension
  - The other dimensions are using a specific member that we always want to filter by

Below you will see only companies with net sales greater than 30,000,000 for the “Balance Post-Alloc” measure remain in the bpmCompany subset. This will dynamically update as selections for other dimensions are changed.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel CubeDimensionCountGet Function

June 21, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever written a TurboIntegrator process and needed to know how many dimensions are in a specific cube? Maybe you want to loop through each dimension to create a zero out view. You can do this by using the TABDIM function and searching for the first blank result, or you can simply use the CubeDimensionCountGet function.

The syntax of the function is:

CubeDimensionCountGet (CubeName)

This function will result in a numeric value that tells the number of dimensions within the cube.

Other uses of this code will allow you to define the number of arguments needed for a CELLPUT command, compare the number of dimensions between multiple cubes, or replicate an existing cube.

This approach will simplify your code by eliminating the need to create a loop.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Chart Multicolors

June 14, 2022 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

One of the visualizations in Planning Analytics is a column chart. This type of chart is a good way to compare items since all the lines are in proportion to each other.

An easy way to create a column chart is to simply create an exploration and change the visualization into a column chart. Here is an example of a stacked exploration that compares companies by scenarios and the related column chart:

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This chart is great since it’s easy to compare the high and low values. However, it’s very hard to differentiate the sub-categories since all columns are the same color. In this case, it’s hard to compare Actuals vs. Final Budget.

You can configure your chart to use multiple colors via the following steps:

While in Edit mode, single click on your 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 chart.

Move the applicable dimension from the Length category into the Color category. In my example, color is associated with the scenario dimension.

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Once moved, the same chart will look like this:

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This approach will allow you to use your color palettes (defined within the properties) to differentiate the dimensions within your stacked column chart and make your analyses easier.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: NumberToStringEx

June 7, 2022 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

IBM Planning Analytics has the ability to export data to flat files with the use of the ASCIIOUTPUT and TEXTOUTPUT functions. However, these two functions will only accept string variables. That means that numeric data will first need to be converted to string before exporting. Most developers know about the NumberToString function, which converts numbers to string, but there’s another function that is more powerful.

NumberToString does not apply any formatting to the numbers. This will work fine if the export is meant to be consumed by another system. However, if your export has an audience, you may want your report to have consistent and pleasing formatting. Here’s where the NumberToStringEx function can come in handy.

The NumberToStringEx function has four parameters: Value, Number Format, Decimal Separator, and Thousands Separator. The number format uses the same structures as the custom formatting in Excel. Here’s an example of the function with the results:

NumberToStringEx( 1750.34892, ‘$#,0.00’, ‘.’, ‘,’)

$1,750.35

As you can see, the NumberToStringEx function eliminates the need to round your numbers prior to conversion as well as concatenating special characters after conversion.

NumberToStringEx also allows for dual formatting of positive and negative numbers. Just like in Excel, you will need to separate the two using a semicolon. This eliminates any IF conditions you’ll need to use to format numbers if you had used the NumberToString function.

NumberToStringEx( -1750.34892, ‘$#,0.00;($#,0.00)‘, ‘.’, ‘,’)

($1,750.35)

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Workspace Process Editor Function Help

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel OFFSET Function

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The SCAN Function

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

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel MAXIFS and MINIFS

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Escape Character

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Dynamic Subsets Based on a Cube

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel CubeDimensionCountGet Function

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Chart Multicolors

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: NumberToStringEx

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