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IBM has recently launched its Planning Analytics version 2.0.5 (on 25th June 2018); this article captures highlights of what’s new, improved and denounced. New / Improved/ Deprecated Features & Fixes: - New: Planning Analytics Administration agent. Totally new, part of IBM’s strategy to brand PAW as a Single interface for all types of users. In this release, once PAA agent has been configured, it enhances Planning Analytics Workspace user’s interaction with metadata and data. Helps users to drag and drop dimension members to achieve new Dimensions, Attributes. Users can drag and drop ...

I want to keep this blog very simple so that people who do not know the concept of blockchain can understand it. Target audience – anyone who can read English. What is a Blockchain? In very simple terms blockchain is a chain of blocks where a block means data. A more sophisticated definition was given by Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016): "Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value." Most of you might think, there we go again, why another ...

One of the most neglected and least prioritised activity among the grand scheme of development, in my opinion, is applying correct formats to data, both in cubes as well as standard web reports. In all fairness, if you’re one of my kind (occasionally-fall-into-a-slack type) who often miss out on this detail, then you have arrived at the right place. In my defence, I still feel that given the number of data points that one must apply formatting, it is only natural to miss a few, which then gets picked by business in live environment. Well, this blog is all about how you save yourself from such ...

In TM1, if a TM1 Cube has huge of volume of data and rule calculation, there is possibility that TM1 takes longer time to open a cube view, to look at the issue with performance would be TM1 View Caches (Stargate Views). The Stargate view contains only the data for a defined section of a cube and does not contain the formatting information and browser settings that are in a view object. The purpose of a Stargate view is to allow quicker access to the cube data. To fine tune and control the Stargate Views, TM1 provides couple of settings namely VMM (View Maximum Memory) and VMT (View Minimum ...

With users unceasingly (almost perennially) demanding higher data upload speed and concurrent transfers, this blog offers insight and considerations one should keep in mind while simultaneously executing a Turbo Integrator (TI) process. It also highlights steps to avoid TI looping and/or thrashing. Synopsys Consider a single user loading data into a cube from source (such as ODBC, Text files, another Cube, etc.) via a TI process for a specific data segment such as a given scenario, period & component, may not experience any wait times. However, when it comes to concurrent users ...

While working for a particular client project, I was asked to review an existing long running Turbo Integrator (TI) process and find out ways to optimise its processing time, without compromising on the business functionality. Synopsis: A process was created to adjust the amount between cost centres and products based on defined From and To mapping in a mapping cube. A simple example could be, amount from one cost centre be adjusted to multiple centres within its division or a consolidation of centre within a division mapped to same consolidation but for a different product. To achieve this, ...

In this blog, would like to introduce you to a new feature called "Compare Sandboxes"; this feature, an extension to Planning Analytics Workspace’s existing capability, shall be available both on Cloud and in Local versions. What is a Sandbox? (Jump to “Feature Explained” section if you are an existing TM1 user & know this well) A Sandbox lets you create your own personal workspace, your own version where you can enter & store data-value-changes without impacting the base (actual) data. A sandbox is not a copy of the base data, but a separate overlay or a layer of your own data values ...

The last 3 weeks has been great in that it has showed an avenue that I had yet to explore in Planning Analytics, debugging. To say it has been highly frustrating at times is an understatement, however I know I only get stressed when I’m learning a difficult concept. It sometimes hard when looking at code that isn't' documented, exactly why this or that piece of code is necessary. Debugging work has benefited me in understanding and developing a methodology to enable me to learn the overall logic and flow of a model/system. Understanding and being able to follow personalised instead of best ...

If you haven't seen already the latest version of Cognos Analytics is now available for you to download. Luckily you won't need to read the about the latest changes. You can view this youtube clip which will explain what's new in it's reporting, dashboarding, stories and the portal for IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.11. If you don't have the time some advanced features include using custom polygons and points for mapping. Also included is data caching in dashboards and stories, as well as support for Portal Pages, and controlling object visibility. To download the software you can find the ...

Let me preface this blog by saying that my trip to India was so insightful, culturally rich and filled with great people that it was hands down the work trip of a life time. Amendra may have had other plans but for me this trip was about creating new connections and deepening my understanding of our cross border colleagues from all our offices. Upon reflection I can easily say that we weren't colleagues for very long and are now people I consider friends. Well some of them, in-particular those who didn't want to Shoot me?! I still don't know where the finger guns came from but I suspect thats ...

Most who are still on Cognos Business Intelligence software version 10.2.x would know that the software version was due End of Service this April 2018. It was quite dreading for existing users who had not planned an upgrade to Cognos Analytics (or C11 as it is called within IBM) just yet as it wasn’t really a straight forward version upgrade but a complete overhaul in the way you would interact with Cognos BI; more intuitive, user friendly and insightful but requires a bit of learning and a little more unlearning. GOOD NEWS!! IBM has just announced a new support option – Continuing Support ...

In this blog, let me explain you about one of the hidden/unused feature from IBM Cognos TM1. Before we start, let me ask you a question - Have you ever come across below requirements or related issues while working with TM1? Urgent requirement - Management needs new consolidation within a Canned report to meet their business needs. An Ad hoc requirement from business to get new consolidation member at the earliest. An alternative roll-up request from the Boss - for a better analysis using existing data. Stakeholders request to have additional consolidations which may be part of ad hoc ...

For starters, God's algorithm is a notion originating in discussions of ways to solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle, but which can also be applied to other combinatorial puzzles and mathematical games. It refers to any algorithm which produces a solution having the fewest possible moves, the idea being that an omniscient being would know an optimal step from any given configuration (source wiki). With the constant barrage of messaging these days, almost pushing you over to adopt cloud, does the choice between “To Move” or “Not To” almost feel like cracking the “God’s Algorithm”? Well, hopefully by ...

This blog will cover an information regarding moving the data between cubes using Rules and Feeders. Questions to be asked before we get started with the topic... Why do we need to move the data to another cube which is having similar dimension structure….?? Can’t we just modify the existing cube….?? Answers “we can modify the cube” and “there is no need to create a duplicate cube “, although there can be a few exceptions like dependent cube(s) which might have been used to create report which sometimes a client may request not to modify. Ideally the data can be moved between cubes using TI ...

One of the major challenges of promoting code to successive instances is packaging the code for promotion and finding a slot for downtime. Not to mention the sequence of steps required to carry out the procedures and to communicate to one and all about the impending downtime. Adding to this difficulty is finding downtime when users are accessing the application from across the globe.So irrespective of deployment size, either major or minor, the deployment process is never going to be easy. However you can potentially overcome this using one of the TM1 Suite tools. To achieve this the ...

In this weeks blog, our team make it our duty to shine some light on right tool your company can choose to meet your business needs. We will cover the much discussed benefits of installing and using IBM's Planning Analytics workspace on Windows 2016. Contents What is PA and PAW PAW and Windows 2016 Benefits on PAW on Windows 2016 What is PA and PAW? Planning Analytics ("PA") is the next version, or can be considered as the next generation of TM1. IBM enhanced TM1 functionality and features and embraced new tools to its' suite. This new enhanced TM1 has been rebranded as PA. IBMs PA has the ...

Contents How to Create Dynamic Parameters for TM1 How to Build a Scorecard using TM1 Architect How to Enhance TM1 Security on a 'Need to Know' Basis How to Use Stargate Views for TM1 Cube Viewer How to Create Dynamic Parameters for TM1 The CheckFeedersMaximumCells is a dynamic parameter that allows users to restrict and control performing check feeders operation in a cube for a selected number of cells. As per the documentation, the default value is 3,000,000, meaning feeders for consolidation with up to 3 million intersections could be checked against, by default. Case in point: I’ve added ...

As business implements more and more technology to streamline their operations the benefits of saving time, minimising costs, increasing productivity and better accuracy are starting to be realised. This means this is hardly a trend that will fade anytime soon. If you or your business are not 'there yet' it’s better to catch up now rather than being left behind with the rest of the competition. We've moved on from the times when cloud technology was an unknown territory for especially for Accounting and Finance but the industry players are now fully aware, prepared or in cloud. This leaves us ...

The last week have been great in that I have been grinding away at our Planning Analytics + Workspace work and preparing myself for workshops and presentations. I am happy with how it is progressing in terms of content and the approach that we are taking. Working from home for majority of the last week has been a saving grace too. The extra 2 hours I get that isn’t wasted in commute into the office is a gift. The transition from office environment back into the hibernation cave of home and actually being able to complete work productively I thought would be more of a challenge than I have ...

It has been an interesting last month of slow but steady improvement in my TM1 / Planning Analytics journey and soon I'll be off to to teach a small team about how to use Planning Analytics + WorkSpace (PAW). It should be interesting considering I am relatively new with the product and now have been tasked to teach others how to use it! I’m not too worried about it however, last week I spent sometime with the client and Martin; who's taught me that I can handle myself under those situations, especially with the knowledge he has given me and what I've learnt about the product. I think the ...

As a TM1 consultant, one of our challenging tasks is improving performance. Often dynamic subsets cause memory leakage and in turn affect performance. Let’s discuss, how to convert dynamic subset to static subset with an example. For Example, the “account1” dimension in SData instance has dynamic subset called “All Members”. Any operation done in the dynamic subset like delete/insert, will make subset has static. The below snippet of code to covert the dynamic subset to static (TI process can be downloaded in the bottom of the blog). Before running the above code After running the above code ...

Good bye 2017! We're about to set our new year resolutions, and ready to jump into 2018! Not without some hard earned rest though. Next year like every year though undoubtedly you'll come across the same problems as this year, and maybe a couple of new ones but it's this guide that I hope you read and come back to because when I've done so it has helped me. So.... In 2018, your 8 steps to SUCCESS will be 1) Get things done The first step as a manager or developer that you need to deploy is embodying a culture of accomplishment, which will help you as success leads to success. Next year let's ...

Loss vs Gain? As we know – one thing that is constant is change and in the technology the change is always for the advancement from current and improvising the existing features. IBM has made significant changes to its Financial Performance Management product and has rebranded TM1 to IBM Planning Analytics. Rebranding TM1 to Planning Analytics does not mean you are going to lose existing tools like Architect, TM1Web, Perspective, Performance modular, Insight etc. IBM has enhanced the existing tools and improvised them. Few among many are listed below. The Cognos TM1 Web UX is totally ...

IBM Planning Analytics Local is the new version of TM1 which was released by IBM in December 2016. IBM has rebranded TM1 to IBM Planning Analytics Local. Get used to using the name Planning Analytics instead of TM1 IBM Planning Analytics is a fast, easy, flexible and complete self-service planning and analytics solution, build on a modern cloud architecture, using as its core, a new generation of the proven TM1 in-memory calculation engine. IBM Planning Analytics is available both as an on premise and cloud based solution. Below is the list of features added to the new version of TM1 aka IBM ...

Although we as devlopers solve problems and that gives us a feeling of success and empowerment, I landed on the realisation that by documenting a problem not just jumping in and fixing it; helps make better decisions. Ok now some of you might ask How did you get there? Others might say well yes of course. I'd like to think that it’s not for any of the obvious reasons you might think of. Let's see. Not all problems will provide a eureka moment but a couple, even one on a particular subject can lead to the formulation of a business transformation initiative. Yes it's happened and while my heart ...

How to utilize TM1 Planning Analytics functionality for your Technology Allocations Allocation Technology and other Service charges back to the departments is typically a difficult exercise for most organisations. There is a large amount of different data sources , data mapping, calculations and reporting capability required. This is just for the actuals – forecasting accurately is usually a bridge too far for most organisations. It does not have to be this difficult! Why do we need to allocate charges – It largely influences the behavior and ensures that departments incur appropriate level ...

As the CFO of your company, your organisation relies on you for more than just numbers. Yes, spreadsheets and financial reports are the hallmarks of your profession. But what about business intelligence and forecasting? Today, the explosion of data available in business matches the explosion of competition in today’s markets and CFOs need to harness that wealth of data to compete. CFOs need better business intelligence tools to identify upcoming opportunities and grab them before their competitor does. They also need to foresee potential losses and advise on how to mitigate risk. In short, ...

IBM Cognos TM1 supported by Planning Analytics is the ideal technology for making Excel-centric budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting and any spreadsheet-based analytical application scale to the enterprise. IBM's TM1 for Microsoft Excel brings the power and familiarity of Excel to the arena of modern enterprise performance management. Planning Analytics, on the other hand, enables business and financial analysts, line-of-business managers and others to explore and analyse data from a variety of different sources—including IBM Cognos TM1 and IBM Cognos Business Intelligence—without IT ...

Is your organisation not realising the full potential of your IBM TM1 implementation? A quick and easy way to increase your productivity, reduce cost and risk is to ensure your users are properly trained in your TM1 model. The best deployed TM1 models can have limited engagement and usefulness if your users are not using it properly TM1 models are built ground up and almost always unique to the organisation so a stock TM1 training usually does not help. 4 Key features of a effective TM1 training delivery Training is tailored to the needs of your users - Almost all TM1 models are unique to ...

In this article is not about being a master and his trusted advisor, this is about trying to find out what are the necessary traits for a successful consultant. I'll be comparing the ideas of 'Master of one' Vs 'Jack of All' Vs 'Master of All'. Let's start from the last one 'Master of All' and with a bit of self reflection, do you really think it is possible for anyone to be a master of everything? I am not quite a believer of this, although, theoretically it is possible but practically in the ever changing world it is impossible to master all the technologies because human psychology says ...

Often times, when we as a developer are loading the data from a particular source and intend to create a view to debug the data for analysis and troubleshooting, typically we do it by creating the view and subsets and assigning the subsets to the view in Prolog tab. The elements from the source are then added to the subset in data tab by using SubsetElementInsert function. This will work seamlessly as long as there is only one record for one element in the source. As soon as the TI encounters multiple records of each element, it starts to add that element again in the subset resulting in ...

By default a numeric value in TM1 is 0. If an attempt is made to store a zero in a cell of the cube, that storage request is ignored. If we input 0 for an intersection, TM1 treat it as NO value instead of 0 value. Instead we can use the UNDEFVALS function. This is to be defined in the Rules file which will enable the end user to input 0 value. Scenario Let’s create a simple cube with 3 dimensions Cube Name: Test Dimension: Actvsbud Region Month Fill up dummy values in cube for the intersection, Actual, all the months and United States Region Open Rule file for Test Cube and type UNDEFVALS; ...

It's hard in our industry particularily when when starting to guage how good you are or how much you know in relation to the products, especially when you don't get to mix and mingle with other Planning Analytics or TM1 developers. Worse is that you don't get to see / hear about other implementations / environments. The aim with this blog is to feature every so often different things you can do to keep work feeling fresh, help, and to push you in different directions. You don't necessarily know how good you are if you're not covering off the basics. So lets start there. Step 1: Can it be done ...

With today's increase in data volumes it is becoming more important to handle the high demand (either loading or accessing) of data conccurrently or in parallel. This blog will assist you by noting the benefits, enabling the functionality, as well as giving you an example. Let's start with the what parallel interaction / concurrency is and it benefits: It's a IBM server feature allowing concurrent operations (read/write). The concurrency operations can be performed on the same cube object. Writing to a cube will not lock it. This means that it will not wait for readers using the same cube to ...

I have been closely following and writing about trends in the business intelligence market over the past three years. During this time, I can’t say that we’ve seen any “radically new” trends, and I don’t expect any to emerge in the second half of 2017. What I have seen, so far in 2017, is the “evolution” of the dominant trends driving a dynamic BI market. The global business intelligence market is expected to reach USD 26.50 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of around 8.4% between 2016 and 2021 (Zion Market Research). Here are the 5 BI trends predicted to most influence the BI market in 2017 ...

This may be the most cost effective and scalable method to take your TM1 application to the next level. There are many reasons why outsourcing your TM1 support and development could be the right solution for your organisation: - Access to highly skilled TM1 developers on demand in a cost effective way - Models built a couple of years ago haven't evolved with the business - Lack of ownership within the organisation - Shortage of skilled TM1 specialists capable of managing the application In today's blog, we would like to list and discuss the five key benefits of outsourcing your TM1 support ...

IBM is truly living up to its principles of a focus on customer outcomes, restless reinvention, and diverse empowered teams. I believe there is no better reflection of this that IBM’s latest release of Planning analytics (powered by TM1) No one anticipated that the next iteration would be a such a quantum leap forward. Both in terms of intuitive use, and cutting edge looks; it is refreshing to see IBM invest in this software to bring it ahead of the competition. That’s right I said ahead. To start, with certain installations you will be able to integrate with Watson, that’s right Watson! ...

Element Security is to set security at dimension element level. Members of the group can access, update, reserve, lock, and delete the element. They can also grant security rights to other users for this object. Element security will be defined in} ElementSecurity_.cub. By default element security is set to WRITE access to all the members Different type of Access Privileges Admin: Members of the group can access, update, reserve, lock, and delete the element. They can also grant security rights to other users for this object Lock: Members of the group can view and edit an element and can ...

The TurboIntegrator Debugger is a simple tool which allows users to set breakpoints and step through TurboIntegrator processes to identify possible issues or errors in your scripts. The TI Debugger is available for Planning Analytics Local. Steps to configure TM1 Server can be found in the link below: https://developer.ibm.com/recipes/tutorials/ibm-tm1-turbointegrator-debugger/ KEY FEATURES Process List User specified breakpoints View object locks on the TM1 server Save and edit TI scripts live INTERFACE The interface is very simple and user friendly with familiar tabs like Prolog, Metadata, ...

As per the IBM’s guidelines, the following points must be taken into considerations pertaining to Planning Analytics on Cloud. The tm1s.cfg file must exist in the base directory Any folders that you create must be below the base directory The location or the name of the base directory cannot be changed The existing tm1s.cfg file must not be replaced from another server. Link: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSD29G_1.0.0/com.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.tm1_cloud_mg.10.3.0.doc/c_tm1_cloud_faq.html In addition to the above, the following config parameters in tm1s.cfg file must not be modified ...

Sandbox, also known as Personal Workspace is your personal work area where you can edit the data values as many times as you want and keep the changed data separate from the base data. Sandboxes and Personal Workspaces are private to each user and cannot be seen by other users. Your data values are viewable to others only when you commit them back to the base data. A Personal Workspace is a special, default sandbox that is unnamed and always where you work if that capability is turned on. To find out more about Sandbox, go the following link: ...

In TM1 rules, an alias could be used in defining the target area (area definition), within rule calculation as well as in Feeders. However, few things must be kept in mind when using Alias in the Area definition of the cube. As the rule is now using the attribute value to dictate the rule calculations, it adds a potential risk of inadvertently updating the alias by the users thereby resulting in incorrect calculations. This could be mitigated by applying security on control objects. TM1 establishes cube dependency as the calculations are now dependent on alias values which resides in a ...

TM1 / Planning Analytics is a robust tool. Typically with other software vendors you need to rely on 3rd Party applications to test. This is not the case with TM1 depending on the type of testing you need done. There are 3 major factors that need to be taken into consideration to define whether you are doing adequate software testing time, cost, and quality. Time and cost is easy to measure but the hardest thing to measure is quality. Especially with manual testing or human testing. In executing the same steps over and over we tend to find short cuts for not doing things the right or long ...

Choosing or even switching consulting companies is never an easy choice. Sometimes competitors make that easy be ruining relationships but being the newest on the scene also comes with inherent challenges. Although we have the best in the business, and we are landing new large clients being the latest player in the market is hard. Especially with customers who think all consultants provide the same. At times Price seems to be the only way a customer tries to tell us apart but what’s on offer is always VERY different. So here we are doing something else different, let us tell you about the ...

The simple answer to what makes a good TM1 consultant is anyone who can do their programming in turbo integrator, write business rules, feeders, and perform an installation of TM1. Can it really be that simple? If those are the qualities of a consultant then what does it mean to be a TM1 developer? This is where the confusion starts. If the above are qualities of a TM1 developer (which is the first stage of becoming a TM1 Consultant) that means we are yet to discover the answer to the question. Know that the expectation of a consultant is over and above that of developer. So what should you ...

Background Virtual Dimensions will change the game of Analysis with Planning Analytics (Powered By TM1) You can use Product, Customer or Employee Attributes in your slice/dice/pivot tools as ‘Virtual Dimensions’ without having to physically define them as a dimension when creating the cube You can add virtual dimension at any time after the cube exists, so your analysis opportunities are endless Cubes can now be half the size and twice as fast bec ause you don’t need physical dimensions to drive analysis And further, you can add fresh new data to your analysis ‘On the Fly’ with no disruption ...

What happens when a user attempts 3 incorrect passwords in TM1? When the user attempts the 4th time he/she will get a message saying: “The maximum number of login attempts has been exceeded” How do we resolve this? Option 1: Admin user to go to Security and then to Client/Groups And then clear that user’s password and re-type a new password And then shoot an email to the user saying your temp password is xxxx and please follow the steps to change your password (which is for the user to login using his new temp password and then go to Security and select change password) Option 2: Another ...

TM1 has got multiple control cubes. One of the control cube which was introduced with the release of planning analytics is }StatsByRule Control cube. With the help of this control cube a number of rule related stats can be viewed This cube has got 3 dimensions }Cubes – Each cube on the TM1 server is included as an element in this dimension }LineNumber – elements 1 through 10,000. The elements correspond to line numbers in a TM1 rule. }RuleStats – Contains elements that correspond to the information and statistics that are stored for rules on your TM1 server, Including Element Description Rule ...

Budgeting and Forecasting is a key function provided by the Finance team. Its no secret that most of the teams dread the budgeting period. Not only it ends up being a manual data crunching and bogged down in spreadsheets it also is a soul destroying exercise as many Finance professionals go through the motions knowing that the numbers they are generating are not relevant and cannot be reliably used to make key enterprise decisions. Organisational complexity is growing. Business demands more insights, better granularity and driver based projections. With evolving business environment ability ...