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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Features in PAW – Data Refresh

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Did you know that there are new features in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)? We’ll cover these new features in the next few blog posts. Today, we’ll discuss how you can set your data refresh definitions directly from the short cut bar. The “Grid Refresh” option allows you to determine when your data refreshes.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Data Refresh

This parameter gives you two options:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Understanding the PAW Data Refresh

After each context change: when selected, data will be refreshed anytime the structure of the view is modified. This includes the swapping of rows and columns, the expansion or collapsing of members in the rows or columns, changing values in the context areas, and using snap commands.

Defer on leaf data change: when selected, data will only be refreshed when an action is taken to refresh the data. These actions include manually clicking a refresh button, entering data in consolidated cells, using data spreading, and updating cells from a date picker.

Just like Excel’s workbook calculation settings, PAW explorations allow you to define your refresh settings.

IBM Planning Analytics 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!

Learn more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Swap Rows & Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics Workspace

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Administration

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This is a guest post from Revelwood’s Shane Bethea.

Did you know there is a new interface in IBM Planning Analytics? You may have used TM1Top or TM1 Operations Console in the past with TM1 and wondered if something new replaced those tools in Planning Analytics. The answer is yes. The new interface that has been introduced in Planning Analytics called Planning Analytics Administration (PAA). It is accessible to administrators via PA Workspace (PAW). Note: At the time of this writing, PAA is only available in the IBM cloud version of Planning Analytics.

PAA combines features from TM1Top and Operations Console and then adds many new features on top of it. Administrators can use the PAA dashboard to monitor the health of the overall Planning Analytics environment and also oversee each individual TM1/Planning Analytics server running within the environment.

The interface is customizable and lets you set safe/concern/critical thresholds for things like blocked threads, memory usage, CPU usage, and disk usage. Once certain critical levels are reached, email alerts can be configured to inform system administrators of the problem.

Other features of the PAA dashboard include the ability to:

  • Start/stop/restart TM1/PA servers
  • View/cancel long running threads
  • Disconnect users
  • Change tm1s.cfg configuration settings
  • Set up and maintain Secure Gateway connections
  • Download error logs from the TM1/PA environment
  • Download documentation (installation guide, new features, fix list)
  • Download the latest version of Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx)

To access the Planning Analytics Administration dashboard, login to your PAW environment and click the Administration tile in the top right corner.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Administration

The main dashboard will show the overall health of the environment and display a tile for each running and stopped TM1/PA server. Note: Throughout the interface, green means safe, yellow means concern, and red means critical.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn about Planning Analytics Administration

You can click on the name of an individual TM1/PA server and see a more detailed view of that server.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Tips for Planning Analytics Administration

This is a simple overview of the Planning Analytics Administration dashboard. Stay tuned for more detailed entries.

IBM Planning Analytics 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: Setting Default Members

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using Excel to get Client Information

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Duplicating Sheets

Did you know Revelwood offers a Customer Care program? Learn more. 

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Swap Rows & Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

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You know that you can easily swap rows and selectors in an IBM Planning Analytics Workspace view, but did you know that you can also easily select the row that will become the selected elements?

The following PAW view shows quarterly data for the Total Company.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Swap Rows in Planning Analytics Workspace

I can drag the Account dimension from the rows and place it on top of the Company dimension. This will swap the columns and will make the account selector into total operating expenses.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Swap selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace
IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Understanding how to swap rows & selectors

I can now select one of the account groups by clicking on the account dimension.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn how to swap rows in Planning Analytics Workspace

But what if I knew in advance that I wanted to see rent by company? Planning Analytics allows you to perform the selection at the same time you are swapping the dimensions. This is done by dragging an element from the row onto the company dimension. If I click on the account row called “Rent” and drag that onto the Company dimension then the dimensions will still swap, but it will also be pre-populated with the element.

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace: Learn how to swap selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace
IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Swapping rows in Planning Analytics Workspace

This approach allows you to analyze your data faster and easier by using less clicks.

IBM Planning Analytics 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!

Learn more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Synchronizing Selectors in Planning Analytics Workspace

Need more guidance? Take a look at our IBM Planning Analytics Training services and our Customer Care Program.

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Revelwood’s Top 15 IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks of 2018, Part 3

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Today’s post is the last in a series of three reviewing our top 15 most popular blog posts covering a number of  IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks and the benefits of migrating from TM1.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: TurboIntegrator Logging

Read this post to learn how to easily control your logs, while also making them easier to navigate.  Your TM1 server tracks data transactions made in the system. When a cube value is changed, TM1 records the change in a transaction log file named Tm1s.log. The values in the log can be used as an audit trail and can also be used as part of a data restoration approach in the event of a server crash. While logging is a great auditing tool and an excellent point of reference, these logs can quickly become large and hard to navigate. This post shows you various ways to control your logging approach and offers some recommendations on when to disable it.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Displaying Data in Maps

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) allows you to visualize your data using a variety of charts and graphs, including the ability to display your results via a map.  The only requirement for mapping is to ensure that your geography dimension includes recognizable place names.  IBM defines “recognizable” to include items such as countries, states and provinces and offers a list of acceptable items on their website. Read this post to learn the three easy steps for creating a map in PAW.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Making Default Cube Views Dynamic with MDX

You can use MDX to easily update a cube value to control the period elements that will display in a subset used in views. This blog post details a scenario on why you may need to do this, and then how to do it.

Here’s the challenge: It’s the end of a quarter and the VP of Sales wants to look at the projected financials for her department. You’ve already built a view that she can open to see the financials, but you just remembered that you forgot to change the period subset to display this quarter’s results. You’ve also just received an email notification from an annoyed VP of Sales. Despite the quarterly reminders that you’ve set for yourself, you forgot to update the default views in various cubes to reflect the current quarter’s plan.

This blog will show you a solution that will allow you to simply update a cube value to control the period elements that will display in a subset used in views.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Performance Monitoring

There are easy ways to address resource issues in order to have a finely tuned IBM Planning Analytics environment. This is the second in a two-part series about monitoring the performance of your server to maintain a working TM1 system. In the first post, we reviewed several methods for monitoring the resources available on your system. Here, I’ll go over some ways to address resource issues you may see. Whether you notice a problem related to CPU, RAM, or disk space, there are short-term and long-term solutions for each.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Installing Samples with Cognos Analytics

There are many sample files available for Cognos Analytics. In order to better experience and understand new features in releases of Cognos Analytics, it is recommended that you install the sample databases, models, dashboards and reports.

Installing the samples involves the following four steps:

  1. Installing the samples
  2. Importing the sample content from its archive
  3. Restoring the sample databases from backups
  4. Creating data source connections in Cognos Analytics to the databases

In this blog post, we will setup the Go Sales and Go Sales Warehouse samples and restore the databases into Microsoft SQL Server.

Thanks for reading the final installment of our Top 15 IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks of 2018.  Missed the earlier posts on our Top 15 blogs? Click through to read the first in the series, covering posts 15 – 11 and the second, covering posts 10 – 6. We publish a new IBM Planning Analytics/TM1 tip every Tuesday morning so please come back an visit our Knowledge Center again.

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BPM Partners Predictions for Performance Management in 2019

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BPM Partners, a privately held advisory services firm with an exclusive focus on business performance management, recently released “Predictions for Performance Management in 2019.” Among those predictions are two that stand out to us.

Prediction: Many More Companies will be Upgrading from Legacy Systems

BPM Partners writes, “We have seen a recent surge of companies looking to replace their legacy on-premise performance management systems with a more modern version and this will continue to grow.” This is something we are certainly seeing as most TM1 users are upgrading to IBM Planning Analytics over the next few quarters. Much of this is due to support for TM1 10.2.2 ending on September 30, 2019.

As TM1 users upgrade to Planning Analytics, they are taking the time to evaluate their current environments, and assess if they want to remain with an on-premise version, move to the cloud, or select a hybrid environment.

Prediction: Company-wide Planning will Gain Traction

BPM Partners writes, “Integrated business planning has been a goal for many years. Most organizations have fallen short when it comes to achieving this goal because of two issues: difficulty in coordinating major cross-functional initiatives and lack of technology support.

“Who drives and oversees this cross-functional initiative (integrated business planning) and makes sure the company doesn’t end of up a collection of disconnected point solutions? … The consensus seems to be that it is the CFO who should oversee coordinated and connected company-wide planning.”

We’ve long seen performance management solutions such as TM1 be used for both financial and operational planning and analysis. Our partner, Adaptive Insights, offers a range of solutions for integrated planning throughout the enterprise. While we focus on Adaptive Insights for Finance, Adaptive Insights also provides Adaptive Insights for Sales and Adaptive Insights for Workforce Planning.

Regardless of whether a company is upgrading from TM1 to Planning Analytics, or looking to expand planning beyond finance, the picture looks bright. As BPM Partners says, “In 2019, there will be more reasons than ever for those that have remained on the sidelines to get on board with performance management.”

Read additional blog posts discussing industry analyst reports on performance management:

BPM Partners Vendor Landscape Matrix for Financial, Strategic, and Operational Business Performance Management

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Revelwood’s Top 15 IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks of 2018, Part 2

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Last week we published the first in a series of three blog posts highlighting our most widely read blogs of 2018. In today’s post, we showcase five more posts that were extremely popular with TM1 users & those Planning Analytics users who have already migrated from TM1.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Year-to-Date Hierarchies

Learn how to create a single hierarchy that contains all year-to-date-values within an entire year. As you know, TM1 is a consolidation tool which is designed to sum together a series of values.  There are many ways to create the consolidations using a combination of grand totals and sub totals.  This blog post specifically addresses the year-to-date (YTD) hierarchy associated with a time dimension.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: How to Make Action Button Messages Dynamic

Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) and Perspectives allow you to customize action button messages. In fact, you can go further and make those messages dynamic. Read the full blog post to learn how to:

  • Set up cells in a PAx workbook for the custom messages
  • Edit an action button to use thee custom messages.
  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using MDX to Compare Dimension Hierarchies

Learn how to use MDX to compare dimension hierarchies. Planning Analytics dimensions often have multiple hierarchies that should all roll up to the same total. Said another way, these separate hierarchies should all contain the same set of n-level elements below them. For example, a customer dimension may have a hierarchy for rolling up the “All Customers – by Type” and another for “All Customers – by Region.” A TurboIntegrator process can be used to maintain the elements in the dimension and these two hierarchies, but sometimes the two hierarchies may become out of sync. MDX can be used to see if both hierarchies contain the exact same number of n-level customers and, if the two hierarchies are out of sync, identify the elements causing the problem.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) Chart Types

Charts and graphs are an excellent way to illustrate relationships in data and highlight trends. Planning Analytics Workspace allows 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. Read the full post to learn the different chart types available within Planning Analytics Workspace, and when one type might be better than another.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) VBA API Calls

IBM Planning Analytics lets you make API calls through VBA in Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel (PAx)? You probably know that action buttons can be used to refresh or rebuild reports in PAx. But what if you want to refresh the data in your report as part of a VBA routine? Maybe there are more tasks you want to perform through VBA and then you want to refresh the data as the last step. IBM offers the ability to make API calls through VBA in PAx with just a few steps.

Check back next week for the last five most popular blog posts of 2018.

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Revelwood’s Top 15 IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks of 2018, Part 1

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Every Tuesday we publish a new IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks blog post. Today’s post is the first in a series of three highlighting our 15 most popular blog posts of 2018.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Ranked Report

IBM Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel (PAx) provides several tools to view, maintain, and report on your Planning Analytics data. Dynamic Reports, one of the PAx reporting tools, allows you to create flexible reports with personalized formatting. An example of this is a ranked report, which will display and sort the top set of rows. Read the full blog post to learn how to insert a TM1RPTFILTER formula into a cell on the Excel worksheet containing the Dynamic Report.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Asymmetrical Axis in PAx

IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) gives you the ability to use an asymmetrical approach that allows you to display combinations of elements without the repetition. IBM Cognos TM1 and IBM Planning Analytics gives you the ability to quickly create views of your existing data.  The views are symmetrical, which means that any rows or columns that contain multiple elements will include all possible combinations of the selected elements.  But sometimes you may not want to see all combinations.

Read the full blog post for an example of a symmetrical view that will be converted into an asymmetrical view.  The example will use a Financial GL cube.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Parameters for TurboIntegrator

IBM Planning Analytics enables you to create a temporary VIEW or SUBSET TurboIntegrator function. This blog post explains why you may need to, and how to do so. IBM has gone to great lengths to ensure that the transition to Planning Analytics is a seamless process and has added some new functionality to help make your system more efficient.

Two commonly used TurboIntegrator (TI) functions are SUBSETCREATE and VIEWCREATE.  These processes are used to create a new component in your process, but they sometimes can cause an issue.  If you create a new subset or view in the prolog but then have the process fail with the DATA tab then the process will end without removing the new components.  This is most likely because VIEWDESTROY and SUBSETDESTROY are most likely within the Epilog.

There are ways to code around this in the existing version of TM1, but Planning Analytics now offers the ability to create a temporary VIEW or SUBSET as of version 10.2.2 FP4.  This is done by adding a flag at the end of the command.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Ensuring Cube Logging is Reset in TM1

Did you know you can easily reset cube logging in TM1? A previous tech tip was written to discuss when to enable and disable logging. As stated in that posting, it is best practice to turn cube logging off while processing TurboIntegrator processes. Typically, logging is turned off in the Prolog and turned back on in the Epilog. But if an error occurs when the process is run, it never reaches the Epilog and logging never gets turned back on.

  1. IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: TM1 Web Write-back Protection

There are several ways to prevent data entry to TM1 in TM1 Web websheets. The first approach can be used for input templates. Use this approach when you want your users to be able to enter data for certain cells/columns, but not others. By default, every cell in an Excel worksheet has the ‘Locked’ property set. This property has no effect on the cell unless the sheet or workbook is protected. In this example, we can select certain cells of an input template to be enterable and certain cells to be locked down or protected. To unlock certain cells in the template, right click the cells and select Format Cells. In the Format Cells dialogue box, select the Protection tab, uncheck the Locked checkbox, and select OK. Read the full blog post to learn the details.

Come back next week to read about the next five most popular blog posts of 2018.

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New Customer Care Offering: System Administration as a Service for TM1 Users

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As part of our expanded Customer Care program, we’ve recently launched a new System Administration as a Service (SAaaS) offering for TM1 users and IBM Planning Analytics users. This new program enables you to tap into our many years of experience, staff expertise and managed services infrastructure. We’ll free up your team from the labors of TM1 administration, while handling your general and cycle maintenance needs.

TM1 users and Planning Analytics users can chose from two options:

Fully Outsourced Coverage for TM1 Users

 We’ll take over your entire administration function. Our team will be fully responsible for ensuring your business cycles are managed from start to finish and that your TM1 environment or Planning Analytics environment is running in top condition. TM1 users will realize a number of benefits from this plan, including:

  • Reducing your SG&A expense
  • Allowing you to focus on your business and core competencies, rather than admin tasks
  • Eliminating the need for you to keep track of all the changes, patches, and updates from IBM
  • Providing uninterrupted service, freeing you from planning around vacations and unexpected absences

Backup/Supplemental Coverage for TM1 Users

We’ll serve as your extra set of hands when you need us. Whether its your busy season or you are taking vacation, we’re here so that your TM1 environment is always up and running. The benefits of this program include:

  • Access your expert technical staff when you need to
  • Augmenting your internal staff
  • Filling any skill or knowledge gaps
  • Ensuring continuity of business processes
  • Freeing your part-time admin to allow them to focus on their primary role
  • Gaining incremental assistance without adding incremental headcount

Our System Administration as a Service offering is one of several in our newly expanded Customer Care program. Our other Customer Care services include a Performance Tune-Up and a Help Desk offering.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigate Back to the Source

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Have you ever been in a situation where you are looking at an IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) view and quickly want to go back to that view? Did you know that PAW allows you to quickly navigate back to the source with a single click?

PAW allows you to easily define the database and cube associated with a cube view by pointing to the top, left corner of the view.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigate back to the source

Once the view is selected, you can then click on the corner to go directly to the source cube.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Navigating back to the source

This approach allows you to quickly navigate through your Planning Analytics environment with a single click.

IBM Planning Analytics 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 blog posts in the IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Series:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) Directory Installation on Windows Server 2016

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Hiding Dimensions in Planning Analytics Workspace

Need more help? Learn about our Customer Care options for IBM Planning Analytics & TM1 users. 

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