Background

When working closely with business processes, it’s essential to always have up-to-date data. However, running a full update each time isn’t practical. That’s why solutions that allow users to refresh only the necessary data using a button in the workspace can be very effective.
This blog demonstrates a method for creating a button that both clears existing values and imports new data for a specific, limited data area. The PA application is developed in Norwegian, but the code should be understandable regardless of language. The environment is Planning Analytics on prem with Oracle database.

Solution 

What this solution does is to zero out data for the selected area. Here it has used the function "CellPutProportionalSpread" to set zero for the total level for the selected area. It then retrieves new data for the corresponding area. By allowing us to enter area selections into the query against the database, we can query against large amounts of data.

The solution

From Workspace

User choose project

This parameter is sent to parameter with sync in parameter button

From process in TI

Added a parameter 

TI Prolog : 

Since this a dimension with many levels and we always wants to send project ID to database I do a lookup in dimension and return Project_ID for all levels

Dimension look like this

Next step is setting todays number to zero. 

I also collect the periode for a global cube

Then is creating the correct SQL 

Here I add to variables.  Periode that is global variable from a an other cube and PROSJEKTID that is from parameter input from end user.

Data :

In data section I only need to do a CellPutN

Summary

This step enables the end user to update data within the current workflow. By collecting less data at this stage, we can gather more data closer to the original sources.

Screenshot of TI process :