Game on!  A record number of abstracts were submitted for Kscpoe12, and here are 3 presentations you will want to check out. 

Session 1: Financial Reporting

Josh Forrest is the best FR person I have ever worked with.  He is presenting “Simplify report development utilizing best-practice methodologies with Hyperion Financial Reporting.”  He is going to cover the benefits and drawbacks of using shared objects, among other things. 

Title:  Simplify report development utilizing best-practice methodologies with Hyperion Financial Reporting
Date:  June 27th
Time:  3:00 PM-4:00 PM

Session 2: Infrastructure

Rob Donahue is one of the most talented architecture resources you will ever find.  The Kscope team thinks so highly of him that they have asked him to be involved, have given him a time slot, and are going to determine the topic at a future date.  Whatever the topic, if you want to learn something about the infrastructure side, make sure you attend.

Date: June 25th
Time:  8:30 AM-9:30 AM

Session 3: Hyperion Planning

I will be presenting a Hyperion Planning solution that provides a great way to give users the ability to spread data at a finite level on any spread method defined.  If you are looking to create, or enhance, your budgeting process, you won’t want to miss how we solved this problem. 

Title:  Create Unlimited Custom Spreads for Driver Based Planning
Date:  June 25th
Time:  11:30 AM-12:30 PM

Goodbye to the days of JavaScript in order to enforce data input policies and rules to Planning web forms.  With Planning version 11.1.2 and newer, Oracle has introduced a powerful set of tools for data validation within the Planning Data Form Designer itself.  Let’s walk through a scenario of how this works.

Say that we have a product mix form that will be used to input percentages as drivers for a revenue allocation.  Here’s what the form looks like:

We should expect that the sum of these percentages to be 100% at the “Electronics” parent member.  If this is not the case, the revenue allocation will incorrectly allocate data across products.  So how do we enforce this rule?  Simple… let’s take a look at the data form design.

As a row definition we’ve included two member selections; 1) Descendants(Seg01) or Descendants(Electronics) and 2) Seg01 or Electronics.  We are going to add a validation rule to row 2 of the data form.  To do this, highlight row 2 and click the + sign to add a new validation rule.  Notice that in the validation rules section, it now says ‘Validation Rules: Row 2’. 

The Data Validation Rule Builder will then be launched. Let’s fill in the rule.  We should ensure the Location is set to ‘Row 2’.  We’ve filled in a name and quick description, then ensured that the ‘Enable validation rule’ check box is checked.

For the rule we’ve defined some simple if logic:

IF [Current Cell Value] != [Value = 1] THEN [Process Cell] ;

To define what occurs if this condition is met we choose the ‘Process Cell’ action defined by the small gear with a letter A next to it.  Here we will highlight the cell red and notify the user with a validation message.

We click through to save the Process Cell definition and the Validation Rule itself and should now see the rule in the data form definition.

So let’s take a look at how the end user will interact with this form.  Percentages are entered by product for each month.  Upon save, notice that all months for Electronics that equal 100% appear normal.  December only sums to 90% and is highlighted in red as we specified in the data validation rule.  We cannot limit the user’s ability to save the form until the cell equals 100%; we can only notify them of the issue, and explain the cause and potential resolutions.

Of course, this is a simple example of what can be done using Planning’s Data Validation Rules.  The possibilities are endless.  Oracle has more scenario walkthroughs in the Planning Administrator’s Guide.  View them here: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hp_admin/ch08.html

Regardless of whether the perception of using SmartView for large queries is good or bad, the reality is that finance and accounting users require the ability to pull large volumes of information out of Essbase.  The only limit that I am aware of in the days of the Excel Add-In was the maximum number of rows Excel would allow (assuming the Essbase application cache settings were high enough to support it).  With SmartView, there is a limit.  The limit is controllable very easily, however.  The error that users may question an administrator follows.

"Cannot perform cube view operation. OLAP error (1020011): Maximum number of rows [5000] exceeded."

To increase the maximum number of rows a user can retrieve, or submit, edit the service.olap.dataQuery.grid.maxRows property in the essbase.properties file.  The default is 5000. While editing this property, it may be benefitial to evaluate the size if the columns (.olap.dataQuery.grid.maxColumns), which is set to 255 by default.

Once this is updated, restart the Hyperion services.

The location of the essbase.properties file is dependent on the version of Essbase installed.  Start by going to the server with APS installed. 

Location for version 9.3
     %HYPERION_HOME%\AnalyticProviderServices\bin directory

Location for version 11
     %HYPERION_HOME%\products\Essbase\aps\bin\

Many Hyperion Planning administrators are eager to customize the Planning application.  Questions are always posted on the Oracle Technology Network forums as to how and what is customizable.  As with any technology challenge, with the right resources and enough time, anything can be customized.  It is unrealistic to think that projects have an unlimited number of people and time to create a completely customized solution.  However, there are a number of things that are developed in Hyperion Planning to support user customization.

• Planning includes templates that control the layout and content of PDF reports of data forms, data form definitions, task lists, and planning units.
• Hyperlinks can be added to the Planning Tools page to support quick access to specific pages
• The appearance of Planning can be customized by changing the appropriate style sheets, which are files that control the UI of the Planning application.
• Templates can be changed to personalize text, colors, and images in the Planning interface
• Workflow tasks can be changed so each state has a unique color.
• Workflow states (Not Started, Approved, etc.) can be personalized so the state more accurately represents the business naming convention
• Workflow actions (Start, Reject, etc.) can be personalized so the action more accurately represents the business naming convention
• Custom spreading patterns can be created.

Future articles will be posted that will provide a step by step approach as to how each of these customizations is accomplished.  The Hyperion Planning Administrator’s Guide will give an overview of how each of these customizations is accomplished as well.