We have a need to copy the output of a drill into a table in another project.  There are two ways to do this:

1. CopyTable Button - Use one or multiple CopyTable script in the actions section of a button, you press the button and it copies the results of the datapath to another project

2.Datalink Connector APIs - Set up a connector to go from and to Apptio,  Put one API path of one drill into each connector, and then you can schedule that to run

Both are great because the report you are copying doesn't actually need to exist anywhere in the source project (and so doesn't add to calc time), but you can create the query so that it appears for the first time as a table in the destination project.  This allows us to separate out our calc and reporting projects so that we save tremendously on time

The one issue though is the exact same datapath produces slightly different results depending on which method you use.  For example, if the datapath contains a trended metric, then via CopyTable it will appear as "Jan FY2019Cost" but via Datalink/API it will appear as "Jan FY2019 : Cost". 

[Another example is that unless specifically specified, copytable gives the unformatted numeric metric number, but API will show it as a text value with the default prefix of the metric such as currency symbol.  This is less of an issue because I can, with a bit of extra effort, change each datapath to change numberformat]

Both methods are useful in different scenarios but am I stuck with using one or the other for the time-being or is there a way around it?

Thanks,

Neil 

Hey @Neil Clarke, from my understanding at a high level, I believe that the Copy Table is essentially recreating the table based on the data path on the fly while the API connector will basically pull what the is shown on the report surface. I will reach out to our SME and get back to you with a more detailed answer.

Hey @Neil Clarke, after reaching out to a SME, this may be a bug. I would suggest you submit a support ticket, as ideally these two should be the same.

Hi @Neil Clarke,

The name of the trend columns has been a pain. I hate it when we don't have control of how the columns are named. I personally would prefer that the year not be in the column name. You could unpivot and get the data but its very kludgy.

I may be able to help here atleast with the formatted numbers. 

I would highly recommend that you edit the url so that you add two parameters shown below. This will give you the raw numbers you need.

https://company_name.apptio.com/biit/api/v2.tsv?date=Jan:FY2018&rawNumberPrecision=15&showRawNumbers=true&dataPath=-@Ccompanyname.com%3AProjectName/..

Hope this helps,

@Sanjay Valiyaveettil