TM1 and Cognos Express Advanced Topics for Admins and Users

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1 TM1 and Cognos Express Advanced Topics for Admins and Users Robin Stevens, Director of Consulting Services Applied Analytix Matt Hopkins, Senior Consultant Applied Analytix

2 Today s Agenda Applied Analytix Who We Are IBM Insight 2014 Conference Overview TM1 Integration Cognos Disclosure Management SPSS Command Center TM1 Cloud TM1 Nuts and Bolts

3 About Applied Analytix Over 15 years implementing Business Performance Management and Analytics applications Team of experienced financial professionals Goal: Help customers become analytics-driven companies Our Partner:

4 IBM Insight 2014 Conference Overview We recently attended IBM s Insight conference in Las Vegas and there s lots to report on! Lots of big ideas. Here s the Scoop! TM1 s integration with other top IBM Business Analytics products continues to grow and is impressive

5 TM1 Integration TM1 s integration with other top IBM Business Analytics products continues to grow and is impressive Let s talk about three of our favorites: CDM SPSS Command Center

6 Cognos Disclosure Management (CDM) Overview Best for putting together monthly reporting packages and board books Automates Narrative Reporting Integrates TM1, Excel, Word and Powerpoint data all together Layers some nice workflow on top A very affordable utility player product

7 CDM: The Four Big Problems with Disclosures/Reporting The Collaborative Problem The Cut and Paste Problem The What Changed Problem The Do it Again Problem

8 CDM Report Process Automation

9 CDM Architecture

10 CDM Design for Canadian Railways About Canadian Railways Operates largest rail network in Canada; only transcon. network in N.A.; 20k+ route mi More than Railroad rail, intermodal, trucking, freight, warehousing, distribution Over employees, 10B in revenue Pain Points Pushed limits of previous software solution as storage point of all analytics Performance Issues: 2-tier architecture very limiting; limited other reporting initiatives, regulatory reporting, board books, etc Maintenance Issues: Security and workflow difficult to maintain Began working with IBM as Beta-customer for CDM; addressed pain points effectively

11 CDM Design for Canadian Railways Benefits of CDM+TM1 Solution (CDMDA) Improved accountability Improved visibility Improved collaboration Automated Report publishing process Data automation Better Performance More flexible workflow and security The best XBRL tagging solution No limits to expansion activities

12 SPSS Overview Best for injecting some predictive analytics into your model We saw some great examples of improving forecast processes Have SPSS generate a starting point forecast Increase your forecast accuracy This is something you all can benefit from, all without a resident statistician!

13 SPSS and TM1 Integration

14 SPSS Direct TV Case Study Direct TV using SPSS and TM1 together: Using SPSS time series to prepopulate forecast Allows users to adjust the Actuals (separate adjustment element) to correct for historical anomalies Measured the difference in forecast accuracy and determined that for 1 set top box type, for a single month, they saved $327K (inventory, customer returns, etc. used to estimate value of savings) Version 10.2 of TM1 w/ version 16 FP1 of SPSS allows direct connect to TM1 Other customers could use to: Determine drivers for each revenue account Create a better forecast for the drivers themselves

15 SPSS Direct TV Forecasting Methodology

16 SPSS Direct TV ROI Results

17 Cognos Command Center Overview Best for centralizing the orchestration of all your systems Great in situations w/ multiple data sources Command Center can co-ordinate Data loads Notifications Log-monitoring Across TM1 and your other systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) Allows your administrators to see everything in one place

18 Cognos Command Center Components Source: IBM Cognos Command Center Version Administration Guide

19 Cognos Command Center Advantages

20 TM1 Cloud Overview IBM now has about a dozen major clients on the Cloud version of TM1, and it s pretty exciting If you feel like you re spending too much time managing infrastructure (and some of you definitely are!), then consider moving to the Cloud We had some personal meetings with clients utilizing TM1 on the Cloud, and the feedback has been very positive The speed is excellent, even for folks with users spread out geographically

21 TM1 Cloud Details Standard: shared VM, 64G RAM, 8 cores Premium: single tenant, 512G RAM, 40 cores Includes a Development and Production environment IBM employees perform all upgrades Cloud is on Softlayer, an IBM company Daily backup & encryption (offsite backup) On prem pieces: Web, Excel (Café), Mobile, Custom (such as Sharepoint integration), Admin (RDP access required for Admin), Data loads via ftps, IDP via SSO

22 TM1 Cloud Details continued On the cloud: TM1 data, BI, TM1 RDP BI portal delivers reports (TM1websheets can be published w/i BI portal) Cloud comes with access to Concert front-end IBM will provide direct connect (rather than flat file/ftp) in 2015 Only users that RDP into cloud server can create web templates (for now) Command Center can have an agent on the cloud server Large healthcare provider signed contracts in early August, and went live on Sept 8 th Bridge to cloud: they will convert your current $$ to equivalent cloud $$. You have 1 year to revert w/o penalty

23 Why go to Cloud? Stop worrying about infrastructure Allow your TM1 applications to expand at a greater speed throughout your organization Seamless upgrades

24 White Paper: Cloud Based Analytics Can Help Organizations Advance Analytic Sophistication Source: IBM White Paper, Business Analytics in the Cloud

25 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Are you taking advantage of TM1 s annotation capability to collect notes? TM1Web now supports additional Excel functions such as sumproduct, indirect, and isblank/iserr functions TM1 Web / Websheets Best to separate out DBRW s from formulas (don t embed) Performance much better if you use a consol element rather than an Excel sum If you re using Firefox or Chrome, you can enable copy/paste functionality with the TM1 browser add-in Is your TM1 server set to High Performance mode? It should be!

26 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Changes from.net Web No Excel service on webserver; xlsx or.xlsm; less cube view charting options, no auto recalc, ActiveX not supported use form controls, can t access cube views via Applications folders New Features Support all Excel rows and columns (no 2003 limits); paging improved; Sparkline support; improved conditional formatting Improvements Nicer rows for Subnms; better graphing graphs closer to Excel version FP1 What s New Consolidated type-in spreading turn off via capability Annotation (comment) support via TM1Web New function support Indirect, n, Sumproduct, IsBlank, IsErr, IsError, IsNA, IsNumber Clipboard plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome (now in the Chrome Store)

27 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Config changes: Recalculation options The <add value="0" key="websheetbackgroundrecalculationmode"/> The UseBookRecalcSetting parameter uses the following format in the tm1web_config.xml file:<add key="usebookrecalcsetting" value="false" />, where value is either "false" or "true" If you set UseBookRecalcSetting to true, TM1 Web will honor the recalculation settings in the Excel worksheet Memory: To increase: (Tomcat by default) Stop the TM1 Application Server Launch a command window as Administrator Go to install_dir\tomcat\bin Type tomcat6w.exe //ES//pmpsvc Click on the Java tab Scrolling and buffering Row and column threshold: Define smaller range on average sized sheet Buffer has to happen for data not seen on sheet; lower this so performance increases

28 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Browser differences 10.2x web more browser side functionality; Firefox and Chrome better for memory; new versions of IE better than older; if option, use 64bit IE System power plan Change to high performance Formulas processing DBR/DBRW processed in bulk, while formulas process separately. Be mindful of what is needed (larger worksheet, use dbr/dbrw) Action buttons Resize button for dynamic changes; if still happening, re-run convert program from Architect

29 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Active forms Common errors inserting data from other cubes, don t link to TM1RPTVIEW, don t use large static subsets (delete hidden sheets) Dynamic MDX test in subset editor; tm1subsetbasis now supported on web DBR/DBRW dependencies; can t split tm1rptrow cols if multiple row dimensions in perspectives; delete row below master row to improve performance Websheet migration No websheet changes when moving DB from Dev/QC/Prod Exporting No longer single threaded; no longer 3 rd party pdf driver; no longer needs to invoke Excel; set max sheets for web tm1web_config.xml; set more granular limits under properties; multiple simultaneous exports capable on client

30 TM1 Nuts and Bolts Cell Function Now enabled in tm1 web for "address", "col", "row", "protect", "contents", "type ; can be used in Action button Sparklines For Sparklines to render properly in an active form websheet, include them in the formatting area of the report. Custom Axis value now supported Miscellaneous Do not set your row height smaller than the Excel text. Excelsheet Directory While not large, this will continue to grow over time. May want to delete the folder every once and a while before restarting the application web service will get recreated.

31 TM1 Nuts and Bolts

32 What s Next for TM1? Great new functionality for TM1 and TM1 Web coming out Next Year More performance enhancements for rules-driven models New look and feel for TM1Web with more analytical capability built-in Expanded ability to analyze data with attributes

33 IBM Vision in Orlando May 17 20, 2015

34 Survey What Piqued Your Interest? Of the items we covered today, what areas would you like us to focus on: A. TM1 Integration with CDM, SPSS and Command Center B. TM1 Cloud C. TM1 Nuts and Bolts D. All of the Above Note: You can select multiple items from the list

35 Next Steps? Contact Larry Stell (866)