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  • 1.  Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/25/25 10:11 AM
    Edited by George Williams 07/25/25 10:13 AM

    Hi,

    We are a fan of Applications for a number of reasons, but have found an issue that turning us away from them without there being a change to the product.


    When loading an asset from an application the first time, Workspace returns the most up to date data from the server. If you click onto a separate asset, change data that affects a view on the first asset, and then back to the first asset, then it just returns the data it has in cache. The only 2 ways I've found to make the data refresh from the server again is to hit the refresh button or have the grid refresh on a timer. When asking our users to manually refresh they are getting confused at why the data appears wrong before realising they need to refresh, and having the auto refresh on is not ideal for data input cubes.

    Swapping the link navigation for buttons and abandoning Applications altogether is our workaround, but we lose some of the benefits we enjoy from Applications. When we configure navigation buttons we can set to pass context or/and refresh target book - which seems to do the trick. When editing sections in applications we have the option to pass context, but not the option to refresh the target asset (book).

    Has anybody else been through this experience, and did you end up moving away from Applications?



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    George Williams
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  • 2.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/25/25 11:45 AM

    Hi,

    We use applications a lot and its not something I've thought much about as our users (like myself) are used to just pressing the refresh button - its got to a point where its habitual and we probably actually refresh far more often than needed. In my opinion (it sounds similar to yours) applications are the strongest method of storing books and building a navigation menu that we have in Workspace and I certainly wouldn't want to move away from it, but I can understand that the risk of it not refreshing could make you consider it.

    Now you have pointed it out and made me think about it - it would definitely be a very positive RFC for the general experience of workspace if @STUART KING or any of the development team are looking to just have the book automatically refresh every time it is clicked on from the left pane in the application navigation (be it automatic or an option setting for the book) - some of the bigger application we use might contain multiple books and concurrent users so by the time you go back to one it is likely to have changed.

    On a positive of the way it currently works - it won't let you enter data and will inform you that the grid needs to be refreshed with an error message. On the downside if you are just looking at the values you may incorrectly take it away and assume its fact without receiving any error message.

    Thanks,

    Declan



    ------------------------------
    Declan Rodger
    Technical Director
    Spitfire Analytics
    Manchester
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/25/25 12:00 PM
    Edited by George Williams 07/25/25 12:01 PM

    Thanks for the reply Declan.


    We are changing our models from Cognos Insight (shameful to only just be moving now, I know!), where one of the things that it did do well was refresh on data changes, so our users are not expecting to have to refresh to see their changes.
    We have over a thousand users across our applications so re-training them all would be a long painful process, and best avoided if possible.



    ------------------------------
    George Williams
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/25/25 11:58 AM

    Hi George, Declan,

    Yes, there are pros and cons of the current Application/Book refresh behavior. Please, log the idea, so we could keep the account, fully review it, and possibly make the actions adjustable.

    Best regards,



    ------------------------------
    Svetlana Pestsova
    IBM Planning Analytics Product Manager
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  • 5.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/28/25 08:54 AM
    Edited by Mark Wragg 07/28/25 08:56 AM

    Hi,

    we are currently going through UAT with a customer and they raised this precise issue with applications. To use their words:

    "having to constantly click refresh button makes each task laborious"

    I would echo what Declan said, in that you end pressing refresh more often than you have to. It gets a bit tricky thinking of all the scenarios where you need to refresh screens, especially when its a websheet used within PAW and the selection filters use different methods.

    regards,

    Mark



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    Mark Wragg
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  • 6.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/28/25 09:51 AM

    Thanks for sharing your experience Mark.
    I've raised the following idea on the portal here - please vote to help us get this higher on the IBM priority list.

    Cheers,

    George



    ------------------------------
    George Williams
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/30/25 05:21 AM

    Thanks George for raising this. I agree this would be a very good enhancement and I've upvoted your idea. It doesn't really make sense that you can enable target book refresh on a navigation button, but not on links in an application. Obviously, as Svetlana alludes to, not everyone would want automatic target book refresh so it would need to be configurable.

    However I could see it potentially being a big ask to entirely reproduce the functionality you get from buttons within applications. When you build a 'pseudo-application' of button linked books you've got full control of which target books refresh and when because you can configure every button on every book. For example, if you want Book A to refresh when you click the navigation on Book B, but not when you navigate from Book C you can do that in a button linked 'pseudo-application', because you've got buttons all over the place.

    Reproducing that degree of flexibility in Applications would need a whole new bit of configuration UI which might make it an unappealing enhancement... maybe that's why its not there already... there's simply nowhere at book level within an application for that checkbox to go.

    But I think that degree of flexibility would be overkill. I think it would be good enough to just stick another switch in at application section level... where highlighted below. When switched on then whenever you click into any of the books in that application section they would refresh. 



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    Nick Williams
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/30/25 05:34 AM

    I agree with you Nick and I am not holding my breath on this one.

    As far as I am aware we can't even order applications yet or have the ability to nest applications inside menus.

    regards,

    Mark



    ------------------------------
    Mark Wragg
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  • 9.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/30/25 05:41 AM

    Hi,

    Regarding the ordering of applications, it's not ideal but since the applications are ordered by the "last modified" date - if you have access to all of the applications that a user would see you can cheat the last modified dates to put them in an order. e.g. just click into each one and toggle to inactive then back to active starting from the application you want to appear last through to the one you want to appear first.

    Obviously you have to redo it every time that you actually modify one which can be cumbersome if you have a lot of them.

    I will also add a vote for the RFC.

    Thanks,
    Declan



    ------------------------------
    Declan Rodger
    Technical Director
    Spitfire Analytics
    Manchester
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Application Assets Not Refreshing Target Book

    Posted 07/30/25 05:55 AM

    Hi Declan,

     yeah this is the workaround I do for ordering applications but if you have a few of them and you update the last one for any reason, then you have to tweak the rest to get the ordering back.

    I find that slightly annoying!

    regards,

    Mark



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    Mark Wragg
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