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IBM Cognos TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s IFS Function

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While the IF function has been around for a while now, IFS is new to Excel. This function checks whether one or more conditions are met and then returns the value associated with the first TRUE condition. The main objective of IFS is to simplify an expression that would have previously required multiple nested IF functions.

The general format of the IFS function is

=IFS(Condition 1, Value if Condition 1 = TRUE, Condition 2, Value if Condition 2 = TRUE, Condition 3, Value if Condition 3 = TRUE)

The function can handle up to 127 different conditions, and only the first two parameters are required.

Here is an example using a sample Excel grid:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel's IFS function
=IFS(A1>250,A2,B1>250,B2,C1>250,C2,D1>250,D2)

will return “Green” (the value of cell C2).

In older versions of Excel, this would be written as

=IF(A1>250,A2,IF(B1>250,B2,IF(C1>250,C2,IF(D1>250,D2))))

Multiple nested IF functions would previously be used to accomplish the same result.

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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Excel Feature – XLOOKUP

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn the Excel CELL Formula

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Recalculating Excel Worksheets

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons for TurboIntegrator Scripts

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In today’s IBM Planning Analytics video tutorial, our FP&A Technical Director, Lee Lazarow, shows you how to easily create buttons for TurboIntegrator (TI) scripts. When you create buttons for your TI scripts, you simplify tasks for your end users and create a much better Planning Analytics experience for them.

In many situations you’ll have a TurboIntegrator script that you’ll want your end users to run. But you should have an easy way for them to run that script. The solution is to create a button in the Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) environment.

Watch our video Creating Buttons for TurboIntegrator Scripts in IBM Planning Analytics to learn the steps to create a button. These include:

  • Going into properties
  • Turning the properties for the button target into a process
  • Choosing if you want a prompt, and how you want that prompt to appear

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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

Watch more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos:

Planning Analytics Administration

Dimension Maintenance in IBM Planning Analytics

Regions with Rules in IBM Planning Analytics

Subscribe to Revelwood’s YouTube channel to watch all of our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos.

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Regions within Regions

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A while back I wrote a blog post about using Regions within Planning Analytics rules. Regions allow you to make your rules easier to navigate and read when scrolling through many lines of code. But did you know that you can have regions within your regions?

Here is an example of a region, both opened and closed:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Regions within Regions
IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Regions within Regions

But what if you wanted to differentiate the components within the region?  You can use the exact same concept to create sub-regions:

IBM Planning Analytics Tricks: Regions within Regions
IBM Planning Analytics: Understanding Regions within Regions

Planning Analytics is smart enough to know how to group the start/end components of the region and allow the sub-regions to work within a larger region.  This approach allows us to create sub-groups to make your code even easier to navigate.

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! You can also sign up to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks sent directly to your inbox!

Learn more about Planning Analytics Rules and working with Regions:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Regions with Planning Analytics Rules

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Writing Rules

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rule Concepts that are Often Forgotten

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The New Planning Analytics Admin Approach

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In our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video, Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s FP&A Technology Director, shows you a new, single location in Planning Analytics where you can perform all your administrative tasks. This saves Planning Analytics admins time and simplifies your maintenance activities by enabling you to do all the tasks you would normally do through Windows services.

With this new approach to administration, Planning Analytics now combines server maintenance, database configuration and user definitions all into a single dashboard.

Watch this video to learn how to:

  • Get the status of your servers
  • Look at log files
  • Examine processes
  • Look at and control individual threads
  • Manipulate configuration settings, including your MTQ – multi-threaded querying setting

Planning Analytics new approach to administration saves you time and simplifies maintenance. This video will show you how to take advantage of this new feature.

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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

Check out our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video series:

Dimension Maintenance in IBM Planning Analytics

Regions with Rules in IBM Planning Analytics

Bookmarking in IBM Planning Analytics

Snap Commands in IBM Planning Analytics

Pivoting & Selecting Shortcut in IBM Planning Analytics

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rule Timestamps

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TM1’s print report wizard still exists in Perspectives and many clients continue to use this approach. I recently came across an issue where a client wanted to “burst” a report and include a time stamp on a report that is being snapshot (e.g., set the cells to contain actual values and not TM1 functions that retrieve values).  Easy peasy … just use the =NOW function to generate a time stamp. Right?

Wrong. =NOW is not a TM1 formula. This means that the cell will not get converted and the timestamp would therefore refresh each time the report was opened/refreshed.

Ok, no problem. We can create a numeric value in a control cube that uses TM1’s NOW function. The time stamp will refresh each time the cell is referenced and we can then zap that value. Again, easy peasy. Right?

Wrong again! TM1 only refreshes numeric rules when the rule is re-processed. In order to keep updating the result (e.g., show the current time and date), the user would need to reprocess the rule each time.

Again, no problem. TM1 may not re-evaluate the numeric value, but it will re-evaluate a string rule like this each time the cell is queried. So we can just switch this into a string value and simply use a STR formula against the NOW command. Right?

Wait for it … wait for it …

Wrong once more! Remember that date stamps within TM1 and Excel vary by 21,916 days (well, maybe). As a result, we need to add these days to the formula. The end result gives us a formula that uses a combination of STR, NOW, 21916, lots of digits and decimals, and a trim of the wasted space.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rule Timestamps

… and this end result gives the client the ability to have a time stamp using a TM1 formula that can be snapshot and then converted into a date format!

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! Or, sign up to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered directly to your inbox!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Configuration Settings for Dates

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Writing Rules

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rule Concepts that are Often Forgotten

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn the Excel CELL Formula

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Excel is, and always will be, a powerful tool for the financial team. With so much power, there are many great Excel formulas that rarely get used. I recently had a situation where I wanted to easily replicate a sheet and have each sheet use an MDX expression that referenced a different dimension name. I wanted to use a formula to determine the sheet name and used the CELL function.

The CELL function returns information about a specific cell within an Excel file. The syntax of the function is

CELL( info_type, reference )

The info_type defines the type of information to be returned and reference is associated with a specific cell. Some examples of info_type include “col” to define the column, “row” to define the row, “address” to define the cell refence and “filename” to return the full path and filename of the workbook and the worksheet.

The resulting format of the info_type called filename is

path[workbook.xlsm]sheetname

I took the approach of naming the sheet with the same name as the dimension. For example, one sheet was called “Account” and another sheet was called “Company.” By using a combination of the FIND function, the MID function and the TRIM function I was able to isolate the sheet name.

=TRIM(MID(CELL("filename",A1),FIND("]",CELL("filename"))+1,99))

I created this formula in cell B10 and then used the result within my MDX expression.

="{ TM1DRILLDOWNMEMBER( { ["&B10&"].[Orphans] }, ALL, RECURSIVE ) }"

This approach allows me to replicate an Active Form report by simply copying the entire sheet and then renaming the new sheet to be the same as the dimension name.

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!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Recalculating Excel Worksheets

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Workarounds for Unsupported Excel Functions in TM1 Web

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Excel Feature – XLOOKUP

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Simplifying Dimension Maintenance

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Watch our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video to learn how to simplify dimension maintenance in Planning Analytics. Once you master these easy techniques, you’ll be able to do all of your dimension maintenance from the Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) administration screen.

In this video, Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s FP&A technology director, demonstrates how to maintain your dimensions in PAW. Lee shows you how to move elements using both a standard drag-and-drop approach and a wizard-based approach. You’ll also see how to create new hierarchies and how to manipulate your dimension structure without going to a different screen.

By merging all aspects of a dimension together, you can do all your dimension maintenance from the PAW administration screen.

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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

Check out our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video series:

Regions with Rules in IBM Planning Analytics

Bookmarking in IBM Planning Analytics

Snap Commands in IBM Planning Analytics

Pivoting & Selecting Shortcut in IBM Planning Analytics

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAx Control Objects

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IBM Planning Analytics uses cubes to store metadata information such as security and attribute information. These automatically generated cubes are called control cubes (which I sometimes call “squiggle cubes”) and begin with a prefix of a right curly brace.

Server Explorer used a toggle approach within the View menu to allow users to either view or hide these cubes. Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) also includes a toggle approach that can be used via the following steps:

1) Ensure that the task pane is showing by selecting the icon within the IBM Planning Analytics ribbon

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAX Control Objects

2) Click on the icon for “show and hide”

Understanding PAx Control Objects - IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks

3) Select the option for “show control objects”

How to use PAx Control Objects - IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks

Once selected, the list of cubes will expand and will display the control cubes. This list can be controlled via cube security to limit which control cubes can be seen by the user.

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!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Troubleshooting Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx)

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Ranked Report

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Replace and Close Feature in PAx

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn How to Use the Pivoting and Selecting Shortcut

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Our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks tutorial video explains how and why you should use the pivoting and selecting shortcut. In this short video, Revelwood’s FP&A Technology Director, Lee Lazarow, demonstrates how to pivot in exploration and select an element in one move – saving yourself a keystroke.

By combining these tasks into one single action, it’s now faster to navigate through your data!

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!

Watch more of Lee’s tips in our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video series:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn how to use Snap Commands in IBM Planning Analytics

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

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Regions with Rules

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22