Planning Analytics

This article shows you how to make PAW reports dynamic, store user’s preferences and are make PAW reports s more personal to business yours.  Users will be able to pickup where they leave off on their financial planning.  An Example is a PAW report can be dynamic and automatically change to the current planning quarter or year.  MDX is used to setup the reports, and details of MDX can be found in other sources.

Create a cube that will store the user preference cube.  My will be called User_Preference.  Recommended dimension for the User_Preference cube are:

• }Clients
• User_Reports
• User_Selection
• User_Preference_m

}Client dimension will have a list of all of the business users.  The MDX statement to retrieve the user name is:  STRTOMEMBER("[}Clients].[" + UserName + "]") .

User_Reports dimension will have a list of all the PAW reports that store user preferences.

User_Selection dimension stores the selection available to the users.  It is recommended to have the below elements:

• Default:  The value used when user does not choose a value.
• Override:  The selection of values available to users.  The list of values can be populated by a picklist.
• Final: The selected value that is shown to the user sees.  It will use the default value if a value is not selected by the user 
• MDX: The MDX query used in the report.  Cube rule can be used to generate the MDX statement.  STRTOSET function will have to be used from the report to use the cube rule generated MDX

User_Preference_m dimensions stores the type of value a user can change.  Examples will include Version, Calendar, Geography Account, Product.  This can be a anything you want.

This screenshot preference cube 

Layout:	Rule:
	User Preference cube  }ElementAttributes_Calendar cube

Other MDX functions that will be used are IIF and STRTOMEMBER.  There is a link to a TM1 MDX commands thanks to George Tonkin
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/businessanalytics/blogs/george-tonkin/2022/06/11/tm1-planning-analytics-mdx-reference-guide

In the PAW report 
Your prompt will have a user preference cube with the intersections

• }Client using the MDX: STRTOMEMBER("[}Clients].[" + UserName + "]")
• Name of the report
• Override
• Prompt dimension element (Calendar)

Screenshot Prompt Page

User Report

STRTOMEMBER("[DimensionName].[" + [User_Preference].(STRTOMEMBER("[}Clients].[" + UserName + "]"),[User_Reports].[Test Report],[User_Selection].[Final],[User_Preference_m].[Calendar]) + "]")

STRTOSET([User_Preference].(STRTOMEMBER("[}Clients].[" + UserName + "]"),[User_Reports].[ Test Report],[User_Selection].[MDX],[User_Preference_m].[Calendar])) 

Update the MDX Code for Calendar View

Done.  A simple report that saves the user preference is now complete.

I like to up my MDX code in the User Preference cube because other admins may modify the report and change the values in the Calendar view accidently.  When this happens, I can easily put in the MDX code that references the MDX in the user preference cube instead of looking for documentation or trying to find a backup of the report.

I used the user preference cube to enhance the user experience for my client with reports selecting the default planning year, filtering on products and product alternate hierarchies.  There are many ways a report can be enhanced with a user preference cube.  Hope this helps you to improve the user experience in your PAW reports.