Per the Help guide: "If the drivers for the source object were assigned tags, you can enter the tags in the Tag field at the top of the Selected Allocationtab. When you specify tags, only the object drivers identified by the tags will be included in the allocation."

I have a driver tagged as Direct in my Cost Source.  I want to create an allocation line to another object that only uses the amount tagged as 'Direct'.  Based on the note from above it seems as I enter 'Direct' as the tag then my allocation will only send up the Amount tagged as 'Direct' in my Cost Source object.  Am I understanding this correctly, because this in not what is happening.  Is there a step I am missing?

Thanks,

Jeff

Jeff,

If I understand your question you are trying to create a tag from one object and then based on how the dollars flow up to the next object you want to continue to only have the dollars that were related that specific tag to only flow up to the next object.  

In the past I had a client that wanted to do Direct \ Indirect & App Dev \ App Run throughout their model so we needed to create tags.  Once you create a tag it will tag those dollars and allow you to pull in that metric (since the tag creates a metric) and see the dollars at any level within the model.  

Based on what your looking to do is that you'd need to due a negative tag to subtract out the other dollars that are not being classified as Direct.  An example of that would be you had two tags coming out of the Cost Source for Direct and Indirect.  You'd need to most likely do -Indirect as a tag in your allocation line.

Thanks,

Ryan

Ryan,

This seems like a work around.  The help guide makes it sound like all I have to do is apply the same tag in the allocation line and only that driver from the Cost Source will allocate up the model using this allocation.

Thanks,

Jeff

Ryan,

I'm mistaken.

I found the following:

A typical application for driver tags is in a model where each object contains drivers representing both fixed and variable costs. The drivers that represent fixed costs could be tagged FIXED. The drivers that represent the variable costs could be tagged VARIABLE. You can then roll up the fixed and variable costs separately. Other applications of tags: RTB/CTB/XTB (Run the Business/Change the Business/Transform the Business), Direct/Indirect, driver layers (depreciation, labor, hardware, software), resource layers (server costs, storage costs).

To assign tags to a driver, click on the Tags field and enter the tags separated by commas. The tags should be the values taken from the identifier column in the object unit table.

You can exclude drivers by placing a minus sign in front of a tag. For example, assume there is a Fixed and a Direct driver coming into Object A and you tag them accordingly. Object A's value is allocated to Object B. To pass both the Fixed and Variable values to Object B, you would enter "Fixed,Direct" in the Tags field for the Object B driver. To pass only the Fixed value to Object B, you would enter "Fixed,-Direct".

Unfortunately, I am not getting this to work as described above.

Jeff,

No worries!  Yeah the tagging concept can get confusing really quick.  I know when I was doing one model I was doing tagging with regards to App Dev \ App Run and Direct \ Indirect.  The catch with the Direct \ Indirect was that it could potentially change as I went up the model.

I know for reporting to make sure that I was reporting the correct totals at various levels of the model I needed to leverage the negative tag.

Thanks,

Ryan

Ryan,

Any thoughts to what I might be doing wrong as I can not figure out how to create the negative tag or combined them using:

To pass only the Fixed value to Object B, you would enter "Fixed,-Direct".

My object drivers at tagged as following:

Fixed, Unrecovered and Variable as my cost source.  Then in the next object I try to tag the driver as Fixed,-Unrecovered or "Fixed,-Unrecovered" and the model still shows the full amount allocating from both tag drivers.  I've even tried creating a second allocation line and tagging that driver as Unrecovered.  

Maybe there's a piece I'm missing and any help would be great.

Jeff

So you have a column in your Labor dataset that says "Fixed/Variable"?  Can you screenshot this?

Jeff

What does your allocation lines look like?

Ryan,

Ok, I understand what you did.  However, it doesn't look like you are using the tags to filter the data up the model as I was hoping you did or what I am trying to do. 

Here's what I understand from what you have shown me (please correct me if I'm wrong).  

The cost source drivers are flagged as Fixed/Variable.  You most likely have keys in both Labor and Cost Source object and that is controlling how fixed is flowing to FTE and variable to Contractor.  Because you filtered your From section, this is whats controlling your allocation line only to send Fixed dollars.  Therefore your tags are not doing the filtering.

Not sure what the whole "Fixed,-Variable" tag is doing.  Even the reporting you are doing should work without this.

I'm trying to get the allocation to filter based on the tag.  That way I can send only the tagged dollars through that allocation line.  That way I can create one allocation strategy for Fixed and the other for Unrecovered.  I also don't have the detail in my cost source that is detailed by Fixed/Unrecovered.  That's in another dataset and I'm using the driver's formula to determine the amount that is Fixed/Unrecovered.

Jeff