TM1 and Cognos Express Advanced Topics for Admins and Users

(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

(3)

About Applied Analytix

Our Partner:



Over 15 years implementing Business

Performance Management and

Analytics applications



Team of experienced financial

professionals



Goal:

Help customers become

analytics-driven companies

(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’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

(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)

(9)

(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 24000 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

(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

(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)

(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

(15)

(16)

(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

(19)

(20)



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)



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

TM1 Cloud Details

(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

(24)

White Paper: Cloud Based Analytics Can Help

Organizations Advance Analytic Sophistication

(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

(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

(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

(29)

 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 3rd_{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)

 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)

(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)

(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

(35)