Written by Mike Bernaiche, April 17th, 2025
In the middle of March 2025, IBM made available the next release for Planning Analytics Workspace 2.1.9 (102). IBM releases updates to Planning Analytics Workspace and Planning Analytics for Excel each month. As always at Lodestar Solutions, we are on top of the new feature and provides updates as soon as we update our environment and test. Below you will find everything new in Planning Analytics Workspace 2.1.9 (102).
Books and Reporting
AI Generated Exploration Analysis (Cloud only) – This feature allows you to export a pdf report that provides an executive summary followed by an impact analysis and outlier analysis for the exploration, allowing you to take faster business decisions. This is part of the PA Assistant, that is available through additional licensing. Please reach out to me at services@lodestarsolutions.com to learn more! Below are screenshots of a sample report I exported.
Important Notes - The exploration analysis is run on the first 120 rows and columns of the exploration. The Exploration analysis report feature uses granite-3-8b-instruct from the Granite family of IBM foundation models to generate the executive summary and insights from the impact and outlier analysis.
Websheet Enhancements –
- Websheet Location – you can view the location of the Websheet by clicking on properties, custom and location.
- Double Click – You can double click to add Websheet to workbook.
- Drag and Drop – You can drag and drop 1 Websheet to overwrite another Websheet
Hide Row and Columns Headers in a View – to hide row or column headers simply click on the hierarchy – hide from the dimension tile context menu
Refresh Target Book Using Action Button – a new option is available when using an action button to navigate to another book or view. Simply toggle the “refresh target book” option when setting up your action button
Zebra Strips Now is Format Menu - The Zebra strips property for explorations is now available in the Data area of the Format manager. Previously, this property was located on the Custom tab under Properties.
Set a Minimum and Maximum for Forecast Values - There might be circumstances where you want to limit the maximum and minimum values for a forecast. For example, your business likely cannot produce a number of units in excess of manufacturing capacity or sell a negative number of units.
Applications and Plans
Search and Filter in Applications and Plans - When you type the search keyword in the search field, the task or section tiles that contain the searched items are expanded, and the search keywords are highlighted.
Modeling
Websheet Enhancements – Several enhancements to Websheet modeling have been added, including making public and private, security, etc. You can read everything added here. https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/planning-analytics/2.1.0?topic=wnim2-websheet-enhancements
Missing Attribute Control Cubes - If you attempt to edit or view attributes for cubes, dimensions, processes. or chores, and the required attributes control cube is not present in your environment, a message informs you that the control cube is absent. If you are an administrator on the TM1® database, the message prompts you to create the control cube.
Import Data Members from ODBC Source - You can now import data into a cube or members into a dimension using an ODBC data source. Previous version of Planning Analytics Workspace supported import only from a delimited text file.
Summary
Not a huge update but I promise you the export analysis report is worth looking at the PA Assistant alone. If you have not kept up on everything new in the PA Assistant you should check out this previous blog highlighting all the excellent features. https://lodestarsolutions.com/whats-new-in-planning-analytics-workspace-2-1-7-100/
Please reach out to me at services@lodestarsolutions.com for more information.
You can find everything new in Planning Analytics workspace here.
Thank you for taking the time to read about Planning Analytics Workspace 2.1.9 (102). I look forward to bring you more excellent enhancements soon!
