IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Run TI Processes from PAx Task Pane

May 9, 2023 by Revelwood

Did you know that you can run TurboIntegrator (TI) processes via the task pane in Planning Analytics for Excel (Pax)? Within the task pane, you can choose to display processes by clicking on the “Show and Hide” button and selecting the option to “Show processes.”

Once enabled, the processes will appear at the bottom of the task pane.

You can run the scripts by right-clicking on a process and selecting the option to “Run process.”

If any parameters are needed, a popup box will appear.

After the process has completed, you can expand the details by hitting the drop-down symbol on the right. This will summarize whether the process ran successfully or whether there were any errors. You can then get further details about the error(s) via the message log.

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: TI Dimension Functions

May 2, 2023 by Marc Assenza

Have you ever updated a dimension in the Prolog of your TurboIntegrator (TI) script and then received errors when making further changes to the dimension in the Metadata section? This is because certain dimension altering functions such as DIMENSIONELEMENTINSERT are not evaluated until the Data Procedure runs.

Dimension updates in IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 follow a specific pattern: duplicate the current dimension, make changes to the duplicated dimension, and then apply the changes to the actual dimension. The applied changes to the actual dimension do not occur until the Data procedure begins (e.g., when all Metadata scripting is completed).

Let’s say that you placed code in the Prolog to add elements using the DIMENSIONELEMENTINSERT function. If you then try to interrogate or manipulate those elements in the Metadata tab, the script would not be successful because the changes have not been fully completed. This can be resolved by instead using the DIRECT version of dimension manipulation functions, such as DIMENSIONELEMENTINSERTDIRECT. The direct version of the functions applies changes immediately to the current dimension and does not require the entire Metadata processing to be completed.

This approach will allow you to properly manipulate dimension in both the Prolog section and the Metadata section of the same script.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Tips, Part 4

April 25, 2023 by Revelwood

Revelwood’s IBM Planning Analytics team has created numerous tips & tricks focused on helping people use Excel. For the past few weeks, we’ve been highlighting some of the most popular and interesting posts on Excel. If you’ve missed our earlier posts, read part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Here are some other Excel tips and tricks from our team of experts.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel YEARFRAC

Some Revelwood clients often build models that define the fraction of a year for a given month. For example, January is approximately 8.5% of a calendar year (31/365) and September is approximately 11.5% of a working day’s calendar (30/260). What happens in situations where you want to calculate the percentage of a year where the days are not the first or last day of the month? This is where Excel’s YEARFRAC formula can help.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Unhide Multiple Excel Sheets

As you know, an Excel workbook can consist of multiple sheets. There are many instances where you may want to hide some of the sheets. It’s very fast and easy to hide sheets, but Excel historically allowed you to unhide only one sheet at a time. Microsoft changed that approach and now allows you to unhide multiple sheets at once.

Learn how to unhide multiple Excel sheets.

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

Excel is, and always will be, a powerful tool for the finance team. With so much power, there are many great Excel formulas that are rarely used. Here’s a situation – imagine you wanted to easily replicate a sheet and have each sheet use an MDX expression that referenced a different dimension name. You want to use a formula to determine the sheet name.Excel’s CELL function returns information about a specific cell within an Excel file. Read more to learn the syntax of that function.

Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 below:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Tips, Part 1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Tips, Part 2

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Tips, Part 3

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: On-Demand Webinars, Part 1

March 7, 2023 by Revelwood

So many webinars, so little time! If you are like me, you probably receive invitations to webinars on a regular basis. Some of them even make it onto my calendar. Unfortunately, more often than not, I have the best intentions of attending a webinar, but then can’t make the live event.

That’s what on-demand webinars are for!

Did you know Revelwood has a YouTube playlist of all our IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 webinars? To date, we have 27 webinars available for viewing when convenient for you.

Let’s take a look at two of our more popular webinars.

Best Practices When Using Planning Analytics Workspace Charts

Charts and graphs are an excellent way to illustrate relationships in data and to highlight trends. They are visualizations of data that allow end users to quickly analyze a large amount of data. To make the biggest impact, it is important to choose the right chart for the use case of the data.

Watch this on-demand webinar to learn about using the following charts in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW):

Area charts
Bar charts
Stacked bar charts
Column charts
Stacked column charts
Line charts
Map charts
Packed bubble charts
Pie charts
Point utilization charts
Radial charts

Creating PAW Charts Using the New Experience

The new experience in IBM Planning Analytics introduced new visualizations in PAW. In this webinar we review various methods to create a chart. We also offer recommendations on building dashboards and reporting pages.

During this webinar we explain and demonstrate:

The types of charts that are available and when to use each
How to create a chart from an existing exploration
How to create a chart from scratch
How to customize your charts
Recommendations when creating charts and dashboards

Learn More About Charts in IBM Planning Analytics

We have even more resources for you on creating charts in Planning Analytics! On Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 1:00pm ET we will be hosting a live webinar on waterfall charts in Planning Analytics.

A waterfall chart is a form of data visualization that helps in understanding the cumulative effect of sequentially introduced positive or negative values.

Join Lee Lazarow and Terry Kerans to learn:

What a waterfall chart can tell you
When to use a waterfall chart
How to create a waterfall chart in PAW

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Color Schemes in a Waterfall Chart

October 5, 2021 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) allows you to change the color scheme in your waterfall charts? The goal of a waterfall chart is to show how an initial value is affected by the intermediate values – either positives or negatives – that result in a final value. Changing the color scheme enables you to make a report that is easily read by your end users.

Watch this short video from Revelwood’s FP&A Technology Director, Lee Lazarow, to see how easy it is to change the colors in your waterfall chart.

Viewers will see Lee demonstrate how a starting amount evolves into an ending amount. You’ll learn how changing colors makes it easy to see positives versus negatives. PAW provides a series of definitions that allow you to customize the colors that you want to appear on the waterfall chart.

Stay tuned for more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified when we publish a new video.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Mekko Chart

September 21, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) offers many visualization options to allow you to show and analyze your data in creative ways. This includes standard chart types such as bar, line and pie. But it also includes some reports that are not always understood. One of these report types is a Mekko chart.

A Mekko chart (also sometimes called a Marimekko chart) is used to extend a stacked column chart by using the width of each column to show the overall importance of that section.

The following stacked bar chart shows Units by State by Item:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Mekko Chart

It’s easy to see that the total amount of units sold in NY is very large when compared to the total amount of units in ME. But what if we wanted to also visualize how much larger the total of NY is compared to the other columns? This is where a Mekko chart can help.

Here is the same set of data via a Mekko chart:

The Mekko chart still shows the breakdown of units by kit and it still shows the values for each column, but it adds a new metric by expanding the width of each column proportional to the overall percentage. In essence, this report is merging the concepts of a stacked column chart with the concepts of a pie chart.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Defining a Process Within Existing Chores

September 14, 2021 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

There are times when you need to change a process within an existing chore in IBM Planning Analytics. The challenge is to understand what chores will be impacted by a change in a process. You could edit or remove and process and then manually look at each chore to determine if it will be impacted. But who has the time for that?

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) offers an easier way to check which chores are affected by a specific process.

Watch this IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video and our FP&A Technology Director, Lee Lazarow, will show you how easy it is to use PAW to see all the chores that can be impacted by a change.

You will learn how to:

Select a process
See an option to show all the chores where the process is used
Determine if you want to edit the chore or remove the process from the chore

Check back soon for new videos in our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks series. Want to be notified of new videos? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

September 7, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Visualizations are used to provide an easy understanding of large data sets. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, what happens when you want to see the intricate details of your numbers? This is where IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) explorations come into the picture.

There are many formatting options for your numbers, but what about the headers? Do you want to simply see a set of rows and columns or do you want the ability to expand into the details? Do you want to differentiate values at different levels or do you want to use consistent formatting? Do you want your row headers to be defined differently than your column headers?

PAW makes it easy to create your preferred approach via some simple settings. The settings are found within the Exploration features of the Custom area. Within the area, settings exist for each of the four settings.

IBM Planning Analytics - PAW Explorations

Here is an example of an exploration that differentiates accounts levels and allows for drilling down to the base level accounts but does not allow for any differentiation or drilling into the time periods.

This flexibility allows you to define both the look and usage of your explorations, thereby enhancing (and hopefully simplifying) the end user experience.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Lines vs Area for Multiple Elements

August 10, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

A line chart is typically used to show values over time. This type of chart is great to see trends with your data. An area chart is also used to show values over time and is sometimes referenced as a line chart with the area below the line filled. While this is the case in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) for a chart that contains a single line, it is not the case for a chart with multiple lines.

Here is a simple line chart in PAW and the related area chart:

In both situations, you can see the trend and you can also see the values.

Here are the same PAW charts with multiple lines (e.g., multiple companies):

In both situations you can again see the trends in the data by looking at the flows from left to right. However, you do not see the same values in the two reports. You can see this by looking at the labels on the Y-axis. The line chart is designed to show a set of independent values and therefore allows you to see the values for each company. The area chart is designed to show the accumulation of the values, which makes it hard to determine values for anything except for the bottom element.

As you can see, the type of chart makes a difference when reviewing your data. So how do you decide which chart to use? The simple answer is to ask yourself what you are looking to see. Are you looking for separate values or accumulated values? As long as your picture answers that question, you can never go wrong!

IBM Planning Analytics, powered by TM1, is full of new features and functionality. Need advice? Our team here at Revelwood can help. Contact us for more information at info@revelwood.com. We post new Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks weekly in our Knowledge Center and in newsletters.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Run TI Processes from PAx Task Pane

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: TI Dimension Functions

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Tips, Part 4

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Unhide Multiple Excel Sheets

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

Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 below:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: On-Demand Webinars, Part 1

Learn More About Charts in IBM Planning Analytics

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Color Schemes in a Waterfall Chart

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Mekko Chart

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Defining a Process Within Existing Chores

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

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Lines vs Area for Multiple Elements

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

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Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Unhide Multiple Excel Sheets

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

Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 below:

Learn More About Charts in IBM Planning Analytics

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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