As Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence systems become adopted as the core decision support mechanisms within organizations, the need for transparent, fact-based decisions increases.  It not enough for these systems to provide the voluminous amount of data to the end user for analysis, but to tie data and decision inputs to the collaborative decisions that these systems support. 

Although the organizational adoption of this style of decision making may face challenges, the technological groundwork is already in place.   Oracle’s addition of Annotation Service to Financial Reporting 11.1.x allows the capture of shared information against reporting objects and data.  This tool allows for threaded discussions and comments within EPM Workspace. 

Let’s take a look at how users can utilize this tool against a Financial Report for a Planning application.

For those of you who still enjoy the flexibility of the Hyperion Excel add-in and have upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007, you are well aware that Excel no longer has toolbars or menus.  SmartView integrates with the ribbon methodology well, but the Hyperion Essbase Excel add-in doesn’t.  What used to be the Hyperion menu is stuck in the add-ins ribbon as a drop down menu.  It still functions the same, but users loose the quick access to functions that the ribbon methodology adds.

In2Hyperion developed a ribbon add-in that can be used in conjunction with the Excel add-in.  Nearly all the functionality exists and makes the options easier to use and are embedded in their own ribbon!  This still requires the Hyperion Essbase add-in to be installed.  It simply uses the existing functions and associates them with a ribbon button.

We have also added a few additional functions that make common tasks a little quicker to perform.

• Drill To Bottom:  Use this option to drill down to level 0 of the selected member.
• Drill To All:  Use this option to drill down to all descendants of the selected member. 
• Restore Defaults:  Use this option to set all the global settings back to the default settings when installed.
• Excel Mouse:  Use this option to set the mouse functionality to the Excel options.  This disables the right click and double click Hyperion Essbase functionality.
• Hyperion Essbase Mouse:  Use this option to set the mouse functional so the double click and right click functions interact with Hyperion Essbase.
• Lock And Send:  Use this option if you do not want to select lock, followed by selecting send.

To install the add-in, unzip In2Hyperion Essbase Ribbon.zip to any location and follow these steps. 

1. Click on the office button in the top left corner of Microsoft Excel. 
2. Click the Excel Options button located in the bottom right area of the window. 
3. Select the Add-Ins menu.
4. Select Excel Add-Ins in the Manage drop down, and click Go. 
5. Click the browse button, navigate to the location where you unzipped the downloaded file, and click the OK button.