I received a number of questions when I attended KScope. A lot of people had a tough time wrapping their head around the fact that using Groovy could actually reduce cost and development time, and significantly decrease the effort to maintain an application. The feedback I get on my lightning lessons has been overwhelmingly positive. The basis of the concept of the use of Groovy making things simpler stems from understanding, using, and becoming confident using collections. I thought I would share some examples, use cases that you all use, and some samples to get those started. If you doubt Groovy can mean simpler and faster, I HOPE this will get you to at least think about coming over to the dark side and provide some perspective that will help.

I would like to create more of these and potentially move my training to be free. Before I can do that I need everybody to watch what I post AND subscribe! If I can generate enough of that, I can create enough add revenue to fun my effort and time. So subscribe, watch, and we will see what happens.

In the mean time, let me know what you think of having videos like this rather than traditional written content. If you would like to learn more about dynamic scripts for data maps, forms, and improving performance with Esssbase scripts by removing serial mode and threading the right way, head over to in2hyperion.podia.com. I have more lightening lessons ready for you to take advantage of!

 

Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from my last KScope presentation, I was asked to repeat the presentation for ODTUG. First of all, I can’t think you all enough for the generous and kind feedback! If you would like to attend, I would love to have you there.

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Many of you used the Essbase ribbon I built 10+ years ago. I have been asked by many to build a similar ribbon for Smart View. Today I am introducing the Power Adhoc Ribbon. It has all the bells and whistles of the old ribbon completely re-engineered for Smart View. There is a nominal fee, but you can try it for free. Some of the awesome features are summarized below.

The Power Adhoc Ribbon has it’s own website where you can get updates, download the most recent version, and read more about what the options and future enhancements. Head over to the Power Adhoc website for all the details.

  • Refreshing worksheets is the cornerstone of any adhoc reporting. We put refresh on steroids. You can refresh the worksheet or all the worksheets in the workbook, but we added even more. The ribbon has two other options that let you refresh with suppression on or off, without changing your Smart View settings.
  • We know you change your aliases all the time. Now it sits on the ribbon to toggle it on the fly. Change between no aliases and the default aliases whenever you want, quickly and efficiently.
  • The ribbon also includes quick options to change your aliases between default and none. It doesn’t stop there. You can also toggle your formatting between Excel and Cell Styles.
  • Now, all your most commonly edited worksheet settings are on the ribbon, including zoom, suppression, and retention. When you change worksheets, the ribbon automatically updates to reflect the current worksheet settings.
  • What do you do when you want to distribute those workbooks with Smart View functions? Zap will remove all the functions in your worksheet or workbook with the values they return and leave any Excel formulas.
  • How many times have you wanted to duplicate a worksheet and been frustrated because it doesn’t copy your settings and connection? That is now a thing of the past. The worksheet duplicator will copy any worksheet and include the connection and worksheet settings.
  • The Power Adhoc ribbon adds a complete template management vehicle. Commonly used worksheets can be saved in groupings and reused at a later time by opening them right from the ribbon. Group them by application, purpose, or however you want. Templates can be starter adhocs or standard reports. You manage your templates and how they are organized. Your templates can be renamed, reorganized, or removed at any time.
  • Power Options allows you to show/hide the options you want. You no longer need to see the options that aren’t relevant to you.
  • Because you maintain your subscription, we can easily let you know when updates are released.  As soon as any improvements are available, you will be the first to know.
  • Not everything on the ribbon will be new to you. To reduce the need to toggle between ribbons, the most commonly used options from Smart View are included.
  • To reduce the learning curve, every option has a power tooltip that explains its purpose.
  • By having a subscription, you get all the updates and you decide what enhancements are prioritized. If there is an enhancement you need, ask for it.
  • Many operations, like refreshing and submitting, can sometimes take longer than you expect. Just to make sure you can monitor those requests, we notify you how long it took by updating Excel Status Bar.
 

My 20+ years of using Essbase I was told, and had no reason not to believe, only stored numbers. We obviously have lists and with Planning it appears we have text. If you aren’t familiar with how this works, the strings are stored in the Planning repository and the index is stored in Essbase. If you thought the same thing, you were as wrong as I was.

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There are benefits to moving to Hybrid, but there are also some challenges.  The content of this post is not around the pros and cons, but the fact that you can upgrade your environment to use it.  If you find it isn’t for you, you can “downgrade” back to BSO.  The flexibility provides everybody the ability to try it.

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Most of us know that there is a button in the calc rule editor that allows us the ability to select a smart list and the smart list entry.  It will add something [[smartlist name.smartlist entry]].  If this is new to you, what it does is replace reference the smart list and replaces it with the numeric value that exists in Essbase.  The beauty of this is that it is dynamic, so if the smart list is changed in any way, you don’t have to go into your rules and replace change the index values for the smart list entries to match.  Guess what, there are more!

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With hybrid being used more and more there is a need to manage the storage methods of different levels of sparse dimensions.  Whether it is a staggered hierarchy or not, getting the storage method from the source can sometimes be challenging.  More often times than not, you may want to own it on the Planning side so you can change it at will and not have to go through the typical IT change order process that may take weeks, or even months, to go through the full development cycle.

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There are a ton of reasons to convert a planning load file to an Essbase load file.  Maybe you are migrating a file from one environment to another, or simple want to load the file faster, but there are reasons to use the Essbase format. Read more

 

I love my Mac and I am getting really close to not needing my Windows VM. I don’t think Smartview for Office 365 is going to be a replacement for the Windows version in my lifetime, but that is the only thing really making me keep my VM current. Read more

 

Oracle is providing free access to Oracle Financial Statement Planning, including Strategic Modeling, to all existing Oracle Planning Cloud customers for the next 12 months.  This includes the use of Groovy.

You would be able to purchase Financial Statement Planning and Scenario Modeling if you choose to continue using it. Alternatively, your right to use Financial Statement Planning and Scenario Modeling will expire after April 30th, 2021.

And yes, Hackett Consulting is a preferred provider to help you take advantage of this.

The Oracle FAQ will provide answers to your most of your questions.  If you would like to take advantage of this, let’s get the ball rolling!  If you are a do-it yourselfer, the following classes will kickstart your ability to implement Groovy.

Try it out for free getting a few samples.