IBM Planning Analytics

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.

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 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: PAW Users and Groups

April 18, 2023 by Lee Lazarow

Do you know how to manage your users and groups in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)? As of version 84, PAW now allows you to edit this information via a single click.

To open the users and groups editor, right-click on a database within your modeling workbench and select the option for Manage users and groups.

Once selected, a grid showing the users on the rows and the groups on the columns will appear. This layout mimics the approach used in Perspectives.

The following functions are available to maintain your user security:

To assign or remove a user to a group, right-click at the intersection of a user and group name, then click Assign user to group or Remove user from group.
To assign all users to a group, right-click the group name, then click Assign group.
To remove all users from a group, right-click the group name, then click Remove group.
To assign a user to all groups, right-click the user name and then click Assign user.
To remove a user from all groups, right-click the user name and then click Assign user.
To remove a group from the database, right-click the group name and then click Remove group.
To remove a user from the database, right-click the user name and then click Remove user.

You can also use the editor to import users and groups from Planning Analytics Workspace or to create a new group on the Planning Analytics database.

Revelwood’s Partners IBM and Workday Named Leaders in IDC Report

April 14, 2023 by Revelwood

Two of Revelwood’s partners, IBM and Workday, have been named Leaders in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications 2022 Vendor Assessment for IBM Planning Analytics and Workday Adaptive Planning.

The report assessed 13 vendors in the market. In addition to IBM and Workday Adaptive Planning, IDC looked at Anaplan, Board International, insightsoftware, Planful, Prophix, OneStream, Oracle, SAP, Syntellis, Vena Solutions and Unit4.

“We expect companies to continue to invest in modern enterprise planning, budgeting and forecasting applications to help them adapt to changes in the business environment and enhance agility to combat market volatility,” said Raymond Huo, senior analyst in IDC’s Business Analytics and Decisioning market research and advisory practice.

This report is based on a “comprehensive and rigorous framework.” The vendors included in the report had to meet the following criteria:

Have standalone, packaged enterprise planning, budgeting and forecasting applications on the market
Meet the threshold of $50 million in enterprise planning, budgeting and forecasting software revenue in C&21 based on IDC’s Semiannual Software Tracker
Have market presence and momentum

Download this report for IDC’s viewpoint on IBM and Workday Adaptive Planning and to learn:

How disruption has impacted the market
Why differentiation in this market is challenging
The latest developments in software features
Why rapid innovation is expected to continue

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

April 11, 2023 by Revelwood

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

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Map Charts

Map charts is a nifty feature in Excel that will help visualize your data. It enables you to compare values and show categories across geographical regions.

Our blog post explains how you can use the Map Charts feature.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s CONCAT and TEXTJOIN Functions

In recent years Microsoft introduced a new version of the CONCATENATE functional called CONCAT. Their purpose is similar in that the new function still combines text from multiple ranges and/or strings. CONCAT will eventually replace CONCATENATE.

The TEXTJOIN function joins text from multiple ranges and/or strings but includes two additional parameters. These parameters allow you to specific the delimiter and determine if empty cells are ignored.

Learn more about Excel’s CONCAT and TEXTJOIN functions.

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

Excel’s IF function has been around for quite a while. Back in 2020, Excel introduced the IFS function. 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.Read our blog post to learn the format of the IFS function.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: UNIQUE Function in Excel

April 4, 2023 by Revelwood

Have you ever needed to produce a list of unique values within a cell range in Excel? If so, the UNIQUE function can do this.

The example below shows a simple list of countries that includes some duplicates:

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To produce a unique list, simply pass the cell range of the original list into the UNIQUE function.

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The unique list of values will “spill” down from the original UNIQUE formula.

This approach will give you a quick and easy way to get unique values from a cell range.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: On-Demand Webinars, Part 2

March 28, 2023 by Revelwood

Did you know we have a wide variety of IBM Planning Analytics webinars on-demand? We showcased two of our most popular webinars – Best Practices when Using Planning Analytics Workspace Charts and Creating PAW Charts Using the New Experience – in a recent blog post.

Here are two more of our popular IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 on-demand webinars.

Best Practices for Using TurboIntegrator

This webinar showcases some features of TurboIntegrator that you may not be using. We cover a series of functions and offer best practices for using them. We describe each function, explain how we use the function when creating models, and discuss the benefits you get by using these approaches.

Here are a few of the topics we review:

Making calls outside of a process
Modifying dimension structures
Creating views and subsets

Best Practices When Using Hierarchies in IBM Planning Analytics

In this webinar, we explain the concepts, the creation and the things to consider when using hierarchies within their existing models. We show examples of hierarchies that Revelwood clients use and how they create new reports and analyses.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips and Tricks: Upgrading to Planning Analytics for Excel 2.0.65 or later

March 21, 2023 by Marc Assenza

As of version IBM Planning Analytics version 2.0.65, you can choose to either launch IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) as a single session (by double-clicking the .XLL file) or load it as an add-in (and have it available for all Excel sessions).

To install the latest version of PAx, first uninstall any version prior to 2.0.65. Once completed, download the.xll file associated with the version you want to install. Be sure to use a file that correlates with either your 32-bit version of Microsoft Excel or your 64-bit version of Microsoft Excel. You can check which version of Excel you have by clicking on File, Account:

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Within that menu, click on the link that reads “About Excel.”

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Details about your version will then appear, including the bit version. Here is an example of what you may see:

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Once downloaded, you can configure the .xll file as an Excel add-in or you can simply double-click the file to run PAx. I prefer to launch the .xll file individually for a single session of Excel and not allow it to persist across all my Excel sessions. Therefore, I created a folder named “PAfe” and placed the .xll file in the folder. I then created a shortcut from my desktop pointing to the file. This approach allows me to perform future upgrades by simply replacing a single file!

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 YEARFRAC

March 14, 2023 by Lee Lazarow

I often build models that define the fraction of a year for a given month. For example, January is approx. 8.5% of a calendar year (31/365) and September is approx. 11.5% of a working day’s calendar (30/260). But what happens in situations when 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.

The YEARFRAC function calculates the fraction of a year based on the number of whole days between two dates. Maybe you have summer employees and want to determine how much of the calendar year they will be employed or maybe you need to rent some equipment and pay based on an annual rate.

The function has two required parameters and one optional parameter:

=YEARFRAC(start_date, end_date, [basis])

Start_date (required)
- Microsoft recommends using the DATE function for this value
End_date (required)
- Microsoft recommends using the DATE function for this value
Basis (optional)
- This determines the denominator using a series of approaches such as 360 vs 365 and whether you want to include the start date

This function will allow you to quickly calculate decimals which can then be used for various forms of allocations, seasonality, and other types of spreads.

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: 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: PAW Users and Groups

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Revelwood’s Partners IBM and Workday Named Leaders in IDC Report

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

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: UNIQUE Function in Excel

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: On-Demand Webinars, Part 2

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips and Tricks: Upgrading to Planning Analytics for Excel 2.0.65 or later

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel YEARFRAC

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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:

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Unhide Multiple Excel Sheets

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

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