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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Sort Elements within a Subset

October 6, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that there are two different ways to sort elements within a subset in IBM Planning Analytics?

Below is an example of a subset which shows a standard time dimension:

Subset sort options in IBM Planning Analytics

One approach sorts all elements either ascending or descending, regardless of level. These are done via the following icons:

The result of this type of ascending sort will put all elements in alphabetical order, regardless of level:

Understanding subset sort options in IBM Planning Analytics

The other approach also sorts elements either ascending or descending, but this approach takes levels into consideration. These are done via the following icons:

The result of this type of ascending sort will put all elements in alphabetical order while keeping the levels intact:

Learn subset sort options in IBM Planning Analytics

This approach will allow you to sort your list of elements in various ways, which offers different opportunities based on the elements within the dimension.

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 Scores 13 Top Rankings and 21 Leading Positions in BARC’s The Planning Survey 20

October 5, 2020 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

IBM Planning Analytics, which is built on the well-known and proven TM1 engine, received numerous high marks in this year’s annual Planning Survey from BARC. The survey provides a “detailed quantitative analysis of why customers buy planning tools, what they use them for, they everyday problems that users experience with the tools and how successful they are.”

The survey findings include:

954% of surveyed users rate IBM Planning Analytics’ coverage of planning-specific requirements as excellent or good, compared to 89% for the average planning tool
50% of surveyed users chose IBM Planning Analytics because of its flexibility, compared to 48% for the average planning tool
43% of surveyed users chose IBM Planning Analytics because of its convincing performance, compared to 31% for the average planning tool.

“Besides planning, customers mainly use IBM Planning Analytics for ad hoc query and reporting (91 percent), standard/enterprise reporting (77 percent) and basic data analysis (72 percent). 51 percent of respondents plan to use it for advanced analysis in the future … 67 percent of Planning Analytics users are planning users – just above the survey average of 65 percent – reflecting the fact that Planning Analytics is essentially a planning tool with complementary BI and analytics functionality.” – BARC Comment

Download the highlights to learn details on IBM Planning Analytics’ rankings, read customer quotes, and more.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Editing Chores While Active

September 29, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) allows you to edit chores while they are active? Perspectives required you to de-activate a chore, make your modifications, and then re-activate it. However, the two “bookend” steps of this approach have been eliminated in the PAW environment.

To edit a chore, right click on the name of the chore and select the option to “Edit Chore.”

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Editing Chores

The chore will open to show you information about the chore. You will then be able to edit the details associated with the schedule and the specific processes to run.

You have the option to disable the schedule at any time, but this is no longer a requirement.

Editing chores in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

This approach allows you to quickly modify your chores without having to perform the mundane steps of de-activating it and then re-activating it. This also means that you no longer need to remember to turn the chore back on after making your changes!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Groups in PAW

September 22, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can create new groups and delete groups directly in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)? This is done within the dimension editor via the same screen that you use to edit dimensions and attributes.

Step 1: Select the dimension to be edited. This is done by either right clicking on a dimension and selecting the option to “Edit Dimension” or by dragging the dimension onto a sheet.

Step 2: Switch to member security mode. This is done by clicking the Member Security Mode icon:

Step 3: You can now modify groups by selecting the icon to either create or delete a group:

If you choose the option to create a group then you will be prompted for the group name.

How to create groups in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

Once created, you can then set security by right clicking on the applicable areas:

Right click on the group name to define security for all elements within the group
Right click on a specific element to define security only for that element

This approach will save you time by allowing you to perform all aspects of dimension maintenance within a single area.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: Using Drag & Drop to Change Selector Elements in PAx Reports

September 15, 2020 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

In our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video, Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s FP&A technology director demonstrates how to change selector elements within IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) using drag and drop functionality. This new feature enables you to do this without having to open the set editor.

Watch this video and you’ll learn how to:

Select the element you want and drag it
Drag an existing set of elements to a selector

This approach enables Planning Analytics administrators the ability to change the values in a subset without having to train your users or learn anything about the subset editor.

Watch more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: Formatting Views in Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: Creating Multi-Level Dimensions

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: The Hold Feature

Best-in-Class Companies Regularly Select Integrated Planning and Reporting Solutions

September 14, 2020 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

According to the recent BARC Score report, best-in-class companies regularly select integrated planning and reporting solutions, such as IBM Planning Analytics, over Excel or home-grown systems. This report gives an overview of the planning and analytics market and provides strengths and weaknesses of leading vendors in the space.

The BARC Score report states, “Today, the reality in many companies is that integrated planning and analytics is an often proclaimed, but seldom achieved goal … So Excel, as the lowest common denominator, is often the default first choice for integrating planning with analytics. However, the lack of coherence of data and functionality resulting from using Excel instead of specialized software tools, are frequently cited reasons for user dissatisfaction, inconsistencies or error susceptibility with planning and analytics in companies today.

The report continues, “companies that use integrated software platforms for planning and analytics experience far fewer problems than those that address both topics separately with different software tools.”

IBM Ranked a Market Leader in Report

This report covers “all of the leading vendors as well as many smaller vendors that often have less visibility, but equally offer outstanding value to their customers. The vendors included are: Anaplan, Board International, IBM, Infor, Jedox, Longview, OneStream Software, Oracle, Prophix, SAP, Unit4 Prevero, Wolters Kluwer | CCH Tagetik, and Workday (Adaptive Insights.)

BARC’s assessment of IBM includes its portfolio of planning and analytics products – IBM Planning Analytics, powered by TM1, IBM Cognos Analytics, IBM Watson Studio and IBM SPSS. BARC lists IBM’s strengths, including:

IBM Planning Analytics offers comprehensive flexibility for business power users to create planning and analytics applications based on a high performance in-memory database
Comprehensive Excel-based functionality for preparing individual planning and analytics content in IBM Planning Analytics (modeling, custom planning forms, etc.) and publishing it to the web
Well-established and expansive partner community with global product support and knowledge

The BARC Score report is based on data points from The Planning Survey, The BI Survey and numerous analyst interactions. Download your copy of the report today.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel LET Function

September 8, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever created a formula that repeats another formula within a cell? Did you know that this repetition may be slowing down your reports?

For example, you may have a report where you want to pull IBM Planning Analytics data and replace zeros with the word “None.” You can write this as a formula via:

=IF ( DBRW(cube,dim1,dim2,dim3)=0, “None”, DBRW(cube,dim1,dim2,dim3) )

Within this formula, the IF check first looks at the DBRW formula to determine a value. If the value is not zero then the IF check needs to re-run the exact same DBRW formula to produce the value that will appear in the cell. This means that one cell potentially needs to run the same formula twice! While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, it can easily impact the performance of your report if you have many iterations of the formula.

Excel has introduced a new function called LET that will help optimize this situation. This function allows you to define a variable that can repeatedly be used within a calculation. It will help you improve performance since it will only execute the calculation once within the cell.

The syntax of the function is:

=LET (VarName, VarValue, Calculation)

VarName is the name of the variable to be used
VarValue is the value of the variable
- This can be a hard coded number or it can be a formula
Calculation is a formula that uses the variable name
- This can be a simple formula such as X+Y or it can use any existing Excel function

A simple iteration of this formula can be written as:

=LET (x, 5, x*2)

This formula would result in the number 10.

The LET formula also allows you to define multiple variables. A simple example of multiple variables can be written as:

=LET (x, 5, y, 2, x*y)

This formula would also result in the number 10.

Using this approach, our initial formula can be rewritten using the LET function:

=LET ( CubeVal, DBRW(cube,dim1,dim2,dim3), IF(CubeVal=0,”None”, CubeVal) )

This ensures that the DBRW pull is only executed once within the cell.

This functionality allows you to optimize your Excel based reports by minimizing the number of calculations that happen within your report.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Control Space

September 1, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever been deep in thought while writing a rule or a process only to realize that you forgot the parameters for a specific command? IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) has solved this dilemma by giving you the ability to determine those parameters with a simple set of keystrokes.

PAW’s rule editor and process editor allows you to use Ctrl-Space (e.g., press the control key and the space bar at the same time) to determine the required values associated with any rule or TI command. For example, if I type ATTRS and then press Ctrl-Space, the following will appear on the screen:

I now know the parameters that are required to complete the code.

Ctrl-Space will also help you determine which function to use. For example, if I type ATTR and then press Ctrl-Space, the following will appear on the screen:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Control Space

I am now aware of all the possible attribute functions that are available and can double click on one of the results to have it automatically inserted for me.

If I do not know anything about the name of the functions to use, I can click on the fx button to see a list of the available functions, all grouped by category.

IBM Planning Analytics Tricks: Control Space

This approach allows you to quickly remember the functions and parameters that can be used in your code without having to shift your focus to another screen or manual.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New PAx Feature – Double Click

August 25, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) contains a task pane that shows the cubes within your model. Double clicking on a specific cube expands the information associated with the cube, including public views, private views, and the dimensions. Version 49 introduced a new feature to the double click … the ability to launch an exploration browser within your Excel environment.

When double clicking for the first time, you will be promoted to define what happens upon double click. There are two options to select from: Expand and Launch

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAx double click

Expand will show the nodes associated with the cube
Launch will open a view editor
Note: as of this writing, at least one view must be defined for the launch option to properly work. IBM is currently working to change this requirement.

After launching and modifying your view, you can then bring the results back to Excel by clicking on the Reports button and selecting the type of report that you want to convert your view into.

New IBM Planning Analytics PAx feature - double click

If you want to reset the action associated with double click, you can change it within the options dialog box.

New double click feature in IBM Planning Analytics for Excel

This feature allows you to quickly analyze data via a drag-and-drop approach and then bring the results back into a Planning Analytics for Excel worksheet.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Sort Elements within a Subset

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Scores 13 Top Rankings and 21 Leading Positions in BARC’s The Planning Survey 20

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Editing Chores While Active

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Groups in PAW

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: Using Drag & Drop to Change Selector Elements in PAx Reports

Watch more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos:

Best-in-Class Companies Regularly Select Integrated Planning and Reporting Solutions

IBM Ranked a Market Leader in Report

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel LET Function

Read more Excel Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Control Space

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New PAx Feature – Double Click

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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