Hyperion Planning 9.3.1: Time to upgrade

Having been fortunate enough to work with the various version of planning from 1.0 (ha, ha) to the latest 9.3.1.1, I can say with a clear conscience that Planning is ready for prime time with version 9.3.1.1. I just came off of a 9.2.3 project and I was really impressed with the stability. The only 2 issues that annoyed me were
-the open ldap directory getting out of sync with microsoft active directory (a batch utility is available to sync these)
-smartview not allowing ad hoc users to lock and send into essbase directly (now included functionality in 9.3.1. This is enabled by a new security role called "essbase write access")

Now with 9.3.1.1 there have been some improvements.
9.3.1.1 has 3 new security roles:
-offline user (might not be new to 9.3.1.1)
-mass allocation
-essbase write access

One dangerous feature is the addition of the mass allocation security role. This feature is initiated by planners selecting it via the web forms. In the docs it is specifically stated that users have the ability to allocate to cells and dimension intersections where they do not specifically have write access. While I'm going to ponder the use of this new feature, it's important for everyone to know that enabling this security role could have far reaching consequences. I think I'll stick to writing customized business rules for allocations for at least the next 9 months.

The best feature that might warrant upgrading is the addition of something called "composite webforms". This allows you to create one web form that is a combination of 2 or more web forms. The ways to use this are endless.
ex1.
-actuals could be in to top panel
-budget can be in the lower panel

ex2.
-top panel could be total entity or company consolidated
-bottom panel could be the current budget

While this is a great leap forward, you cannot resize the 2 combined forms. The size is fixed to half of the screen (either vertical or horizontal). I think we can live with this.

One drawback of the latest planning is the fact that Oracle/Hyperion no longer wants us to use HAL for maintenance of the planning tree. Our choices are now "enterprise architect" and DIM. There's nothing wrong with using HAL but you'll have to get special permission to find / download the software. It's not on the download site any more without special permission.

After asking around, "enterprise architect" seems a little green. One issue I have with the tool is that once you create or modify the planning hierarchy using architect, you can no longer use the planning web to modify the outline. Now we are forced to manage planning via the "classic planning administration" option.

DIM (informatica with planning plugin) is pretty nice (a little hard to figure out from the docs) but it appears that it might have a short life span. It appears that this product will be replaced by something else from Oracle. This is a shame because it looks like a really nice tool.

The best part of this verison of planning was that I was able to make a new planning application without manually editing any confiugration files. The new app appeared on the web also with no need to bounce any services.

hj