How do you organize your planning UIs?
How do you organize your planning workspace books, views, websheets? Today you probably put them in a set of folders. Folders have their uses. They're great for the people building the solution who have to manage many reports and books, but they don't provide a great entry point for your end users.
More than just a folder?
Your planning solution is more than a loose collection of reports. Organizations often build a number planning solutions each with a specific planning or analytics goal. You might have a Workforce plan, a Revenue plan, an Expense plan for example, or a solution for each functional area of the business. You want to send users directly to a specific starting point, without forcing them to sift through folders or to decide which book to open first. Your users want guidance on which workspace book to use when, so you want to provide structure and meaningful groupings.
Applications On the Welcome
IBM Planning Analytics now allows you to organize your content into Applications and place them as entry points right on the Welcome page. The icons and descriptions you provide guide your users, so they don't have to search through hundreds of reports.
Applications don't replace folders. Books are still stored in folders and can be accessed that way. Application provide a way to bring content from several folders together in a way that reflects their business purpose.
Sidebar provides a table of contents and announcements
Clicking on an application takes your users to the book you want them to begin with. It also provides a sidebar with a full list of all the books, views or websheets in the application, organized into sections like a table of contents. Users always know where they are and can navigate through all of the books without having to return to the welcome page. You can also use this area to make announcements to the user community.
For instructions on how to take your existing content and organize it as an Application, check out the IBM Knowledge Center.
Next Step... add some process
Applications are a great way to introduce your users to the input forms, reports and analyses that they need for a particular domain area. If you want your users to follow specific steps in a process with deadlines and submissions status, you can turn your application into a plan. Mark Kiel has a great blog showing you how you can use plans to reflect your organization's process.
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