ITPF Noob Question: When planning against projects, I can't seem to get the Cost Center drop-down to show-up... 

• Project Reference Data has a column that has all our cost centers
• I've got "Allow Any Cost Center"=TRUE
• I'm sourcing the data from Cost Transparency, but the "Default Cost Center" value doesn't seem to follow when I update the reference data. It seems to be picking the first CC from the "All Cost Centers" column, even if I set the value to blank from CT.

What could I be missing?

Thanks for your question @Kyle Castro.  I'm passing your question to our @Apptio UserAssistance team.  

Hi there @Apptio UserAssistance, do you have any updates for me on this?

We're still having a lot of problems with our ITPF Configuration... We have Project Financial Planning, but we are NOT able to select a Cost Center and save it under the Project Planning View.

Per checking the Project Reference Data, we have "Allow Any Cost Center" marked "true" for all Projects.

We also have a string of all our Cost Center Codes indicated in the "Cost Centers" field. I don't know what else is missing or is going on here.

It has been more than 3 months that we've been trying to configure ITPF, and hasn't been a very good experience so far.

Hey Kyle - Would you be able to post a screenshot as to where you are not seeing the Cost Center Option?  Additionally a screenshot of the project reference data would be great to help solve this.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can post a screenshot of our reference data here...

The issue is that we're unable to use the Project Financial Planning view to enter budget entries because the cost center drop-down doesn't work. Even existing entries that were submitted through "All Plan Sections" cannot be edited when in the Project Financial Planning view...

Can you try setting the "Allow Any Cost Center" option to "false"?  With a string of cost centers & your currently set "true" value, it may not function.

I've actually made a change to this recently. I've already removed the all cost centers string and set the value for "Allow Any Cost Center" = true... Despite this, I'm still unable to get the Cost Center drop-down to work for the Project Financial Planning view.

Can you try going the opposite way?  I've generally configured it with it set to false, but keeping the string of cost centers.  When I go to adjust the cost center, I get the full list in my drop down.

@Ryan George, thanks for your suggestions. I'll give this a shot and let you know how our performance changes. My only concern with having a string of Cost Centers mapped to project reference data is the maintenance task of having to update this column each time our list of Cost Centers change (i.e. added or removed)

Would you know if there's a a dynamic formula we can use to yield a list of all cost centers from our Cost Center Reference data?

If that does end up working for you, I agree it adds another layer of complexity, but if you are using the cost transparency integration, you could set your tables up in TBM Studio to dynamically update off of the Cost Center listing.  

We are definitely using the CT Integration and managing our reference data in TBM Studio for consistency. Would you know what formula would be able to do this?

To get the cost centers in a string on 1 row, you could do some config leveraging transforms and pivot steps.

This could get out of hand if you had a lot of cost centers, but setting this up to account for additional cost centers in the future would be as easy as extending out the formula.  There could be a much easier process than this, but the first thing that comes to mind is this:

1) Create a new table from the import step of your cost center listing

2) Create 2 new columns in a formula step

   a) Grouping and ="Group"

   b) Cost Center Pivot and =Cost Center, set this as a numeric

3) Group the data by your new column "Grouping" & the original Cost Center column

4) Add another formula step and create a new column called New Column Count and =Row()+1

5) Add a Pivot Step

   a) Pivot Row=Cost Center Pivot

   b) Pivot Column=New Column Count

   c) Pivot Value=Cost Center

At this point you should be left with a lot of columns, and 1 row of data with column headers 1,2,3,4 with a cost center code within each column.

6) Add another Formula step and create 1 additional column:

   a) Cost Center Combination={1}&","&{2}&","&{3}&","&{4}&","&{5}....

      You would build this formula out for however many cost centers you have + additional future cost centers.  You would get an error as the formula wouldn't find the future columns, but it would prevent you from having to touch it in the future.

You would then be left with a Cost Center Combination that has all of your cost centers in string that will update depending on updates to your Cost Center Listing source file.

You would then need to add a column called Match set to "Match", go to your ITP transform, add the same column, then do a lookup into your transform with the pivot step, and bring back your string to put it on every row of your Cost Transparency Integration.

Things to watch out for:

1) Make sure you do the new table off of the import step to prevent a future circular reference.

2) Do not model this table or leverage it in the model as the Row()+1 can have a terrible impact on performance if it gets leveraged in an identifier.

HI Kyle,

Have you opened a support ticket for this? In addition, if you start typing a cost center name into the cost center column does it populate?

Thanks,

Lauren

Hi @Lauren Griessel - yes, we have a support ticket for this. The response we've been given so far was to await a performance update patch for ITPF. Our Reference Data isn't too large, so I'm wondering why ITPF keeps having issues.

Also, when I type a cost center name in the cost center column, it takes a long time before the drop-down suggestions start working - and this only happens in the All Plan Sections view. In the Project Planning view, the cost center drop-down doesn't even work at all.

Just an update to this... it had been suggested that we try 2 approaches for this:

1) Set "Allow Any Cost Center"=TRUE

2) Set "Default Cost Center" with a coma separated list of Cost Centers (e.g. CC1234, CC4321, CC5678 etc.)

NEITHER of these approaches are working for our particular version of ITPF per our last test, and this issue has not been resolved for us yet. All in all, I find ITPF to be too rigid and clunky, especially because we've come from a customizable R11 Legacy IT Planning Project.

It seems to be designed with specific workflows and strict reference data enforcement in mind. But if your organization isn't willing to adopt these workflows and has ever-changing data during the budget cycle (like shifting Project Priorities) - using ITPF can very quite tedious and time consuming.

At this point, I just wish that we can just rebuild our simple R11 Legacy IT Planning into R12, rather than breaking bones just to fit into this ITPF box.

Hi Kyle - Sorry to hear about the troubles your team is having.  Any chance we can connect to discuss this further?  I am interested in understanding your R11 custom project vs what you have today.  My email is ryan.george@maryville.com

Hopefully I can provide you a sense of how other ITPF users are dealing with some of the same challenges.

Thanks,

Ryan

Hi there @Ryan George, I want to thank you for pitching solutions to the issues we've been encountering. I've relayed this to an ITPF SME, which he said should work. However, our particular implementation ITPF just isn't working the way we're expecting. I am currently working with Apptio Support to investigate this further.

It has already been almost 7 months of trying to get ITPF to work the way we envision it, but we aren't having much success - which prompted my last update to this thread.