The latest release of Planning includes several performance improvements as well as some new features not present in earlier releases.Some highlights of the new features include:
- “Member on the Fly” functionality– For Workforce Planning, Capital Asset Planning, Project Financial Planning and Public Sector Budgeting customers, Planning offers “member on the fly” functionality where end users can dynamically add sparse dimension members and use the added members on a form without performing a Planning refresh.The administrator determines how many new members can be added prior to the next regularly scheduled refresh.Below is an example on how to the “member on the fly’ functionality can be implemented:
- The Planning administrator determines the number of dimension members and the parent containing the new members.The number of dimension members should be based on how many members will be added between database refreshes to eliminate the need for additional refreshes.
- The administrator runs the regularly scheduled database refresh to add placeholders for the members in Essbase.Although the placeholders are in Essbase, they do not appear in Planning until a user decides to add a new member.
- A user having access to the dimension as defined by Planning security will add a new member and can now enter data for the new member.
- The administrator runs the regularly scheduled database refresh.The placeholder designation in Essbase will now be changed to the member name defined by the Planning user.
- Aggregate Storage Option (ASO) Plan Type– Starting with the 11.1.2.3 release, Planning customers having a full use Essbase license can now have plan types which use aggregate storage databases.You can write back to the ASO database and set up forms against an ASO database.Aggregate storage can offer significant performance improvements for those plan types that are have large dimensionality and large volumes of data where all data is loaded at level 0 and upper levels are aggregations of the lower levels.Note that an administrator will need access EAS or MAXL periodically to merge the data slices resulting from users entering data from forms concurrently.
ASO plan types are set up either within the Planning application creation process or within the Web Administrator using the new Manage Plan Types function.Although the ASO plan type is part of the same application from a Planning perspective, a separate application is created within Essbase since ASO databases need to be in separate applications from BSO databases.The Planning repository keeps track of the Essbase applications and databases within the Planning application.
- Smart View Metadata Update– A Hyperion Planning Admin Extension for Smart View allows Planning administrators to update metadata in Smart View.The advantage of using Smart View is that member properties can be changed for multiple members simultaneously as opposed to one member at a time on the Planning web.For example, if 10 members needed to have the consolidation property changed from (+) to (~), the properties can be changed at the same time using Smart View instead of accessing each member individually and changing the property.The Hyperion Planning Admin Extension for Smart View can also be used for other metadata changes such as moving members and designating members as shared.Administrative functions such as creating and refreshing databases are also available through the Hyperion Planning Admin Extension.
For further information on the new Planning 11.1.2.3 features, please see the Oracle Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.3 New Features Guide at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E40248_01/epm.1112/planning_new_features.pdf.
For further information on the new Planning features within Smart View 11.1.2.3, please see the Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office New Features Guide at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E40248_01/epm.1112/smart_view_new_features.pdf.