Written by Mike Bernaiche, April 4th, 2023
In March 2023, IBM released Planning Analytics Workspace 85. Updates to Planning Analytics Workspace are cumulative. If you are currently on version 76, you only need to upgrade to 85 and you will have all the new content from version 77 to 84 included. I provided a list of blogs below that lay out all the new enhancements in recent previous versions.
Ok, let’s get to everything new in Planning Analytics Workspace 85.
Books and Reporting
Set Editor Usability Improvements – These improvements will make working with the set editor easier and more user friendly. These changes do not introduce new functionality. Rather, some options on the set editor have been moved or made more intuitive.
- Available Members Option - now appears immediately adjacent to the Available Members label, rather than beneath the label.
- Current Set - menu now appears above the current set, rather than on the header.
- Available Members Search Bar - always visible and you no longer need to click a Search icon to reveal the search bar.
Plans and Applications
Improved Approval Process for Plan Submissions - Plan owners and approvers can now approve or reject a submission from multiple contributors in one go.
When approving or rejecting a submission, you can select the contributor(s) whose submission you want to approve or reject. You can also click Select All to apply your action to all the contributors for that submission.
Save Task Flows in Plans as PDF - You can now save your plan's task flow as a PDF file. In the task flow view on the Plan tasks tab, click the Export icon to save the task flow as a PDF.
Modeling
Modeling in Planning Analytics Workspace 85 sees the most enhancements in this update.
Reopen Recently Opened Objects from Any Database - You can now reopen recently opened objects from any database. The recent list contains the last twenty objects that were opened, with the most recent at the top. To remove an object from the recent list, click on the x next to the object name.
Workbench Preferences – There is now a preferences icon always visible in the Workbench. By default, all sections are collapsed, but retain their previous state when the user opens or closes the Preferences panel. Opening and closing Preferences also refreshes the selected values.
You can set the following preferences:
Database tree
- Display members.
Dimension Editor
- Compact header.
- Show value bar.
- Show dimension editing warning.
- Page size.
Cube viewer
- Show hierarchy name.
- Show context information.
- Show icons.
- Show section header.
Process editor
- Font
- Font size.
- Enable line wrapping.
- Lock generated statements.
Rules editor
- Font
- Font size.
- Enable line wrapping.
Process Editor Preferences – You can now set a toggle to lock or unlock generated statements in the process editor. When the Lock generated statements option is enabled, users cannot edit the process script between the #****Begin generated statements and #****End generated statements lines.
Lock Dimensions in Planning Analytics Workspace - A user must have either Admin or Lock privilege for a dimension to lock the dimension.
When a user locks a dimension, only those users who have Admin rights for that dimension can modify the dimension. Even the user who locks the dimension cannot modify it, unless they have Admin rights for that dimension.
When a dimension is locked, options are disabled for these actions:
- Add members to any of the hierarchies in the dimension.
- Remove members from any of the hierarchies in the dimension.
- Create a hierarchy in the dimension.
- Delete a hierarchy in the dimension.
Users can create, delete, or update subsets under any locked dimension.
To lock a dimension, right-click the dimension on the Databases tree in either a book or a modeling workbench, then click Lock dimension. A lock icon appears on the dimension name indicating that the dimension is locked.
Create Formulas when Importing via .CSV - When you use the Import data or Import members options to import from a .csv file into a workbench, you can define formulas to manipulate the source data.
New Location Data Source Option via TI - You can now specify a local or network location for a TurboIntegrator process data source.
Summary
Lots of great stuff in this update, especially in the Modeling area. Definitely worth checking out in my opinion. For a detailed list of everything new from IBM check out this link.
For Lodestar blogs on all new items in recent updates to Planning Analytics Workspace 85 check out the below link. If you are on an older version of Planning Analytics you should really consider upgrading. We offer great programs to help you upgrade at a reasonable cost. Reach out to us at services@lodestarsolutions.com.