tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5650447034492920692024-03-08T01:12:35.992-06:00Hyperion Consultant Bloga place to discuss technical and not so technical issues relating to implementing hyperion software.Howard Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-36927867453066754972013-09-24T17:35:00.002-05:002013-09-24T17:35:27.014-05:00Essbase Aggregate Storage considerationsEssbase aggregate storage has been around for quite a few years now. It's good at what it does, aggregates large amounts of data quickly.<br />
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If users want to get data out of an ASO application I used to agree with all the forum postings of "Where did you load the data from?" Anyone in their right mind should be storing all the ASO source data somewhere, just in case.<br />
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This seemed to be an OK line of thought until write back was allowed to an ASO application via lock and send. Now the rules of the game have changed.<br />
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If users can lock and send data to ASO, the system <u>must</u> be able to export that data nightly. Sure, you can do an operating system level backup, or a native Essbase ASO data extract then import into an ASO app, but what good does that do you if you need to send the budget to outside systems, or you need to get to the data from a non Essbase tool? The entire world does not revolve around Essbase despite what we might like to believe.<br />
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Real world example:<br />
I was on a project that was live where the client decided to modify their production system by flipping the signs on revenue accounts so revenues were positive. This was apparently an oversight on the first go live. There were 2 databases that needed to be modified, 1 block storage and 1 ASO database. The block storage changes were easy and the solution was implemented in one afternoon. The ASO sign flip was a bit trickier and someone else got to take that one over.<br />
The following were tried:<br />
-an MDX script to multiply the revenue by -1. This seemed like the correct tool to use but the system said the script was too big. 2 to the 52 power was too large for Essbase. This was already only touching 1 of 10 entities for 1 scenario for 1 year.<br />
-exporting the data in native then import to block storage then export in column format. This took some time getting the outline to fit in block storage. The data loaded without error but when the block storage was exported to column format it was missing 70% of the data. <br />
-the trusty old report script was then attempted. Report scripts turned out to be the solution. Over 100 report scripts were generated and run to get the data out of the ASO app. This data then had the sign flip applied then reloaded.<br />
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It looks like in 11.1.2.3 an export can be to relational. I'll be excited once I get to test this on a populated ASO database. While this is nice, I'd still like to see an option for a flat file extract.<br />
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If I'm overlooking anything here please let me know.<br />
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hj<br />
Howard Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-28580704336126157702013-07-18T02:18:00.000-05:002013-07-18T02:18:00.226-05:00long time out of pocket...I can't believe it's been 2 years since my last posting. I've been busy with 1 large Planning implementation 11.1.2.2 project for 2 years in my home city of St. Louis. So that's 2 years without getting on an airplane. While looking for my resume to update, I was kind of shocked to see how many years I've been doing hyperion. I believe I'm approaching 20. Who would have thought that this 1 multidimensional tool, essbase, would survive the pairing down from over 50 tools to less than 10.<br />
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What kinds of questions would you like addressed?<br />
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I'll be posting about system 11.1.2.2 and some of the new or different way of doing things. We implemented in classic mode with odi. I've been burned by epma 3 years ago and I still have the scars to prove it. I have some buddies that say epma is good but I'm a little skeptical. 11.1.2.2 was the first version of planning where I couldn't find any bugs with the core functionality (I'm wondering how much a part of this was classic mode versus epma).<br />
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hj<br />
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When you leave a comment, be sure to leave your email address within. I have no way of getting in touch with you other than posting posting your comment and replying on the blog.
Howard Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-91331570712967059712011-05-11T16:45:00.000-05:002011-05-13T15:26:19.933-05:00books to read...I have received a few comments asking about what books to read. Sorry to say but I cannot recommend any books because I have not handled any of them personally to recommend a book. That doesn't mean that what's out there is not good.<br />
What makes Hyperion a bit overwhelming in the beginning is that you really need to learn 2 parts, Essbase and Hyperion Planning. To be able to build Hyperion Planning systems that will actually work you really need to have an understanding of Essbase. Once you learn Essbase, Planning will come easy. In either case, the Oracle administrator and developer documentation is available online. Before buying anything, I'd digest what's available online. Online content consists of:<br />
-Oracle documentation<br />
-news groups <br />
-blogs<br />
-web sites that google takes you to<br />
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-official Oracle documentation. There are different features depending on the version of the software you are looking at. The 2 most relevant versions now are:<br />
Oracle (Hyperion) system 11.1.1.3 <a href="http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/index.htm">http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/index.htm"></a><br />
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Oracle (Hyperion) system 11.1.2 <a href="http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/index.htm"></a><br />
-news groups<br />
Public technical Hyperion: http://www.network54.com/Forum/58296/<br />
Public Oracle discussion for Oracle business intelligence:<br />
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/category.jspa?categoryID=145<br />
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-web sites<br />
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<br />
-free online web sessions to discuss Hyperion topicsHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-10861913676954670872011-04-13T08:42:00.000-05:002011-04-13T08:42:04.107-05:00What is the best version of Hyperion EPM System 11 right now? 11.1.2 patchedNow that a patch has been released for 11.1.2, this would be a good time to avaluate starting your project with 11.1.2. There are some nice planning features like being able to add validation of web form submissions without performing any custom java.<br />
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I have worked on 11.1.2 on 2 projects now and have had some serious issues with the unpatched version.<br />
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As far as upgrading to 11.1.2, I would think of this as a capability of a .0 release software. Meaning, yes it says it does it but this has not been patched yet so you should not expect a perfectly seamless upgrade.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-15468931355062473852011-02-01T10:42:00.000-06:002011-02-01T10:42:26.915-06:00What is the best version of System 11 right now?System 11.1.1.3 or 11.1.2?<br />
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While System 11 is out for 11.1.2, there have not been any patches released yet. If you are going live very soon, you should go with 11.1.1.3 (with patches). <br />
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If however, you are starting a project that will go live in 6 months you could go with 11.1.2 then plan on implementing the patch when it comes out in the next 1-2 months. It looks like the patch has been delayed a few months already.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-44598406486943214732010-10-01T08:08:00.001-05:002010-10-01T08:08:28.798-05:00What is the most overlooked task on Hyperion Planning projects? Security.Building security.<br />
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In the throws of a Hyperion Planning project, everyone is quick to want to get into the system to see and touch it. Sometimes this leads to the admin id / password getting out the door. Or almost as bad, all the folks on the team, including business users, getting provisioned the administrator security role.<br />
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This might seem like an ok idea on day one but no one ever comes full circle to test security from an end user perspective until that fateful day, UAT (user acceptance testing).<br />
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Here's why security cannot be slapped together in an hour or 2.<br />
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-reports that were developed without using a "secured" test user id WILL NOT work when using a "secured" id. In Hyperion Planning, any id other than admin cannot see data at the top of Entity, Scenario, or Version. Reports developers usually do not know this as their background might include writing reports directly against Essbase (not an issue here) and not Hyperion Planning. All too often when the army of report writers (IMO the customer should write the reports with consultants assistance) are brought in, they somehow acquire the admin id or privileges to get their report development moving. They get their 50 reports done and roll off the project. Then during uat (if security is actually tested), none of the reports works. Now you're left scrambling to "fix" these reports with the original developers long gone.<br />
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-properly setting security so a web form enables write access is not a small feat. Each of the "delivered" dimensions entity, scenario, and version first have to have members opened up (through "meta data" security assignment). This applies to administrators as well as users. Allowing administrator access for testing is only a crutch that will get you in the end.<br />
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-sometimes when looking at the security matrix it's determined that the entities dimension does not allow for the proper security to be applied and changes must be made to the entities dimension. This is not an easy thing to do at the end of a project. All business rules need to take into account any changes in the entity dimension as well as reports that have been developed.<br />
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-web forms that used to work under the admin id don't work with a secured id because the business rule security has not been assigned. Business rules have to have their security assigned for secured id's as well. Since business rules are usually set to run on save without interaction from the user, it can be a difficult issue to resolve when users report that a form is "busted" and give no further detail.<br />
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Security can be a very complicated matter. Not enough thought is given to the design of the security matrix and not enough time is dedicated in the project plan. Every project has to address building security in Hyperion Planning. <br />
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I will outline how I address security in a later post or on my website.<br />
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Like most everything, proper time needs to be taken in order to match the security requirements with especially the makeup of the Entities dimension.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-21317913642525043542010-03-31T22:13:00.000-05:002010-03-31T22:13:36.980-05:00Essbase licensing: no fee for additional Essbase servers, really?This is the greatest news I can remember about licensing for Hyperion since Oracle started giving away Integration Server and the Essbase API. It turns out that one of my current customers was able to add another production Essbase server without paying any additional licensing fees to Oracle. So it finally looks like there is a benefit to the licensing model that years ago took away concurrent user pricing. It looks like Oracle is satisfied with charging a per user fee so they no longer will charge for additional production servers and development servers. Do you remember the day's in which a development Essbase server costed in excess of 10k? Now we are just waiting for Financial Reporting studio to output directly to Excel workbooks.....<br />
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Check with your Oracle sales rep. The details / paperwork is a little fuzzy as to which customers can add as many Essbase servers as they want for free. Chances are if you've recently purchased / upgraded your Essbase / Hyperion, this is now an option. So if you're currently running version 11 this is likely to be the case.<br />
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Rumor has it that Oracle EPM 11.1.2 is coming out very soon....<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-15150880929932095192010-03-02T05:30:00.004-06:002010-03-02T20:06:56.571-06:00As a Hyperion administrator what skills should I be learning....In working with Hyperion for the past 15+ years, I've seen a lot of clients and a lot of system administrators. I've even spent significant time trying to backfill my administrator role at various clients as well. You might be surprised at how many folks are out there that say they can run Essbase but they have never written a calc script. There is a great difference between maintaining a Hyperion system and developing a Hyperion system from scratch. In order to make yourself more valuable you need to really understand what's going on under the covers. I've even advised a few business analysts that focusing their efforts on really understanding and learning Essbase would result in a bigger bang for the buck than starting the process of gaining an MBA. In both cases they were able to double their salary in the course of 3 years by learning Hyperion and switching employers without incurring +10,000 in student debt. Usually folks involved in Hyperion at a client don't have any time to goto night school anyway. The right move I believe is for a company to figure out a way to keep this talent. So much business knowledge is learned from creating these systems that it is a real shame for it to go out the door.<br />
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Anyway, some things that you should do to make yourself more valuable in the Hyperion arena include:<br />
-fully document your Hyperion Systems and identify / train your backup resource. Go download the outline extractor and export all your outlines to audit all the member formulas in your databases. Many administrators out there have a really tough time taking vacation and an even tougher time taking time off for training as the system seems to stop running when "Bob" is not here. <br />
-devise an issues log to help track all the fires you are putting out. When it comes time for yourself appraisal, you need to have proof of the amount of work your are performing. Saying you are just solving the needs ("keeping them happy") of finance is not tangible. Despite your best efforts it's not possible to keep users happy. By keeping a log you can better explain the amount of work you are performing and this can also give you credibility when you come to the realization that you need to get another head hired to help you out. Logs also help you prioritize and keep track of all the issues. "Prioritize" - the secret that allows IT folks to go home at 5:00pm every night when business folks are always getting stuck working late. It seems on the IT side that resources are always limited while on the business side there is no cap on how hard people work to complete deadlines.....<br />
-learn Essbase VBA to figure out how to automate bulk loading of spreadsheets into Essbase and to streamline other business admin tasks<br />
-see what else VBA can help out with. You can easily create a menu based interface in Excel for report generation.<br />
-understand when web based reports should be used instead of Excel for reporting creation and distribution<br />
-recreating your applications from scratch in development. In so doing, understand the decisions that were made for your application and challenge yourself on how to improve the model.<br />
-reviewing your cube update process and automating every step possible (stop touching the outline by hand when there are more than 1 to update, make a dim build file and run it through batch dimension builds)<br />
-review your data loading process and try to load your data from a relational data store (instead of loading from files, get these files loaded to some kind of sql data store) and perform your etl (scrubbing of your file, adding prefixes, concatenations, etc) in the sql and not the load rule (load rules are disposable and sometimes get corrupted when upgrading. These also are not self documenting).<br />
-learn what esscommand and maxl are (command line based scripting used for automating Essbase administration)<br />
-learn how to perform allocations with calc scripts (spread a value stored at the top of 3 dimensions down to level 0 based on a populated account)<br />
-if you have any calc scripts running, make sure you have validation workbooks to audit every calc that takes place in your models<br />
-review your scripts (might be Essbase only, not sure about HFM) and review the benefits of inserting substitution variables to make your scripts more dynamic<br />
-if you have not created an aggregate storage database do so. If you don't know what an aggregate storage database is then read up on it.<br />
-if using Hyperion Planning review your business rules and web forms to ensure the user experience is as streamlined as possible (not a list of 12 steps of business rules that must be run in order). A user should not need to know how to run more than 1 or 2 business rules. These should all be attached to web forms that run upon save without requiring the end users launching these in the tools->business rules menu.<br />
-also, if you're using Hyperion Planning, go through the effort of configurating and using the application copy utility in System 9 or learn how to use the life cycle management tool of system 11.<br />
-get 2 virtual machines setup, one for windows xp (easy one) and another for windows server 2003. A virtual machine allows you to run different versions of software on your desktop. These are like mini machines that run on your desktop. You can now switch between running Essbase 6.5, 7.x, 9.3.3, and 11.1.3 on your pc. You'll actually need to "fire up" (a vm takes up about 10gig of space on your hard drive and takes a few minutes to start) your vm and probably not run them concurrently. But, VM's can be very valuable in testing compatibility of Hyperion with different versions of IE and Excel.<br />
-install hyperion software on these vm's. There is plenty of help out there on the internet how to install system 9 and more recently system 11. You can install Essbase System 9 on a Windows XP client vm (shared services, essbase, bi+ (workspace).<br />
-learn ODI as this is the replacement for HAL. While this will be a necessity for Planning, ODI can also come in handy for working with Essbase.<br />
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ps. If you think you're ready to branch out into the traveling consultant role let me know. I know some pretty good consulting firms to work for. If you think you would rather go independent drop me a line and I'll try to talk you out of it. Some folks have a hard time saving their acorns for the winter months.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-2034620137573913862010-01-23T21:39:00.005-06:002010-01-31T20:45:49.465-06:00Hyperion - lets focus on infrastructure client story 3This is one of my favorite clients. It's perhaps one of the typical Hyperion Planning environments. The business folks are running the Hyperion Planning environment. IT at this client site is there to help. The don't put up roadblocks or resent having Hyperion in the building. Well, I last visited this client about 2 years ago. Since that time they have restored using my directions more than a handful of times. It turns out that in the quest to be super responsive to the business environment, a couple of "oops" happened. The planning app ended up getting stuck so they made a copy of the Essbase app and have been running that for a few months. I recieved a call from their IT asking how to get this new Essbase app to show up on the planning web login screen.<br />
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Well, I thought that I preached too much when I'm at a site about what Hyperion Planning means to Essbase, but apparently not in this case. Hyperion Planning maintains the outline structure of Essbase. Virtually all outline changes must run through planning first then get pushed to Essbase. In this case they restored the Essbase outline not the entire Hyperion Planning app. The answer to their question is "no. This Essbase app cannot be made available through the planning log in screen". The resolution is that the planning app needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. It turns out this is acceptable to the client as they were ready to rework some dimensions materially. They were also able to function because the extensive business logic in the business rules can be run against native Essbase as well as Hyperion Planning. <br />
Lessons learned: <br />
-development environments are very important. Even if you don't have a development server, at least make a copy of your production app for testing different business requirements.<br />
-always make changes to the outline structure in Hyperion Planning then push them to Essbase via a refresh.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-87136827117083076782010-01-23T21:24:00.003-06:002010-01-23T21:39:44.214-06:00Hyperion - lets focus on infrastructure client story 2This client is one of the more controlled IT environments in which I've worked. There is proper change control. The business folks have had until recently only read only access to the server. Essbase is running on Unix. There is a full time DBA (contrator 3 years). Sounds pretty good. Well the day came where I needed to restore data from 9 days ago. My typical environment provides the Essbase admins to recover the last 7 days of data and Essbase objects. This set of backups was working properly but I just needed a little bit older data restored. Since we had been in production for a few week, I assumed everything was being backed up. My Essbase admin also believed this. When the call came to restore from tape, it came to light that somehow there was an exclude on the data directory we were using for my Essbase server. So, the good news is that this came to light before a really critical restore was needed. It just caused me 2 days of headaches that resulted in having to assist in validation of data that would not have been required had the restore been functioning.<br />
hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-56552919974861151252010-01-21T22:14:00.001-06:002010-01-23T21:23:38.684-06:00Hyperion - lets focus on infrastructure, client stories....I've just had 3 clients experience extremely painful outtages due to the ignoring of their server environment.<br />
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Client 1: When I last left this client, microsoft mom alerts were running so anytime the server was bounced we (I) would receive an email. This is one way to keep your IT honest. I can't tell you the number of times that IT bounces and touches the Essbase server when they shouldn't be. All produciton outtages should be scheduled, no exceptions. In addition, alerts were running that would notify the business admins of Essbase (business side of the fence) when the hard drives approached 80% capacity. The Essbase hard drive filled up and there was a crash. I got contacted a day later. 3 of 15 apps would not start. I arranged to remotely restore the files from tape if they could place the tape backups in a folder. Guess what? Before this series of outtages from 3 clients at the same time, I would have guestimated a 60% success rate of recovering from tape backup. Now my educated guess has dropped down to 40%. The files they placed in the folder were missing some important files (app, .ind, .pag to name a few). After 8 weeks, I am still battling with this client to ensure backups will be usable. The problem is that the business users had their original data loads scripted and were able to quickly recover. No lesson has been learned yet. I just attempted another restore and their IT still could not replace all the necessary files. This is in an environment where I am giving IT lights out of Essbase for 5 hours a night. <br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-45804267551958973342009-09-30T23:38:00.000-05:002009-09-30T23:38:01.270-05:00So you're running Hyperion Planning, you think you have Essbase, right?I have discovered a common theme in implementing Hyperion Planning. The customers are thinking they are getting Essbase when they buy Hyperion Planning. This is kind of true. Essbase is the back end of Hyperion Planning and Planning cannot work without Essbase. But, the customer cannot use Essbase if Planning is not connected to the database.<br />
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At the moment, you can build a native Essbase application in hours or minutes. Building the same application via Hyperion Planning using the tools to update the metadata layer takes significantly longer and this also requires the dreaded refresh process.<br />
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Another feature that is unavailable is the ability to make stand alone aggregate storage Essbase applications. These applications can come in quite handy when trying to squeeze consolidations into a limited processing window.<br />
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So, the moral of the story is that during your software negotiation process, make sure you have a specific line item that says you have native Essbase. Or, call your sales rep and see if they'll allow you to use Essbase without Hyperion Planning.<br />
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hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-64716674784309567522009-08-26T20:12:00.006-05:002009-09-08T23:04:05.388-05:00Is your essbase reporting system working for you or against you?When you first got essbase, everyone was excited right? Speed of thought analysis, slice and dice, you could now get to those numbers.<br /><br />Well what is your environment like a few years later?<br /><br />Has your admin gotten burned out and quit? <br />Are you on your 2nd or 3rd admin?<br />Is your reporting process back to waiting on the manual creation of reports even though they are sourced out of Essbase?<br /><br />A common theme has emerged from my clients as more of them have been running Essbase for more than a few years now.<br /><br />-the essbase administration is found to be very manually intensive and unwieldly<br />-published reports are too often created out of excel manually<br />-the original DBA is long gone (no processes are understood but run by looking at documentation consisting solely of printscreens)<br /><br />While I am often brought in to a new customer for new application development, I find myself addressing all of these issues time and time again.<br /><br />I'll expand on each of the challeges and how they can be overcome in the postings that follow.<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-44626332526102056202009-02-26T22:51:00.010-06:002010-05-01T10:49:18.170-05:00HPT Administration: Findings from a typical Hyperion engagementBelow are some findings from a typical customer running Hyperion Essbase. I didn't have the energy to write a more exhaustive list for Hyperion Planning administrators. <br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Manual steps involved in production processing<br />
</span>Business folks are great at documenting procedures (ie. Writing down the steps to do something). The problem is that since they are business folks, they are used to working harder to get results. I’ve had clients that would on a daily basis, come in, load a file, and calc a cube by hand. The good one’s would then manually tie out the data and then send out an email saying the cube was processed. This was usually completed by around 11:00am. After this they would start their real job. There are 2 different scripting tools available to automate these tasks, esscommand and maxl. <br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Tieout of hyperion to other systems<br />
</span>There are quite a few customers out there can can’t explain why Essbase doesn’t tie to their source system. They even stop tying it out because it’s always off by x, so why bother. You have to start out on day 1 with a system that does tie. Even if Hyperion does tie out, the validation process is still a manual one. This manual task can be automated into an email being sent out daily after each cube is processed. <br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Error logs are not empty<br />
</span>A common mistake is that when someone looks at a error log, they see the same error repeated many, many times. “We’ve always had those errors. It’s too much trouble getting rid of them.” Well, by default Essbase only logs 300 errors. So, if you have expected errors that number 200 or > 300, some real errors (like a new customer with activity) never come to light. This is an issue that I’ve seen at numerous clients (>10 through the years). <br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Maintaining unwieldy hierarchies in the outline manually<br />
</span>While the graphical nature of managing an outline is pleasing to the eye, it’s not the best way to maintain structures in a production environment when multiple cubes are deployed. One option is to create a hierarchy file that is then passed to each cube that should be modified. If you need a little more control you can store the hierarchy inside a relational database and feed it into Hyperion Planning or Essbase via a load rule with sql interface or Integration server. Additional options include writing custom API code, and even purchasing after market tools that perform this task (Star Analytics). There are probably a dozen more options that Oracle offers but I’m not well versed in all the names out there. <br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Running applications that are not productionized<br />
</span>While it’s a little tricky developing a new application from scratch, it’s not too difficult taking over the administration of a Hyperion Application. Just write down the steps then perform them. Sounds easy, right? Well what typically happens for Essbase, is that once an application is in production, additional copies are made that are just a little bit different. These models then come online. Now the maintenance of your one app has doubled. The change to the hierarchy that took 20 minutes now takes 40 minutes. As cubes multiply this issue becomes a greater burden. If there are changes that must be made to multiple databases consider building these via a load rule so you can make the same change to multiple databases easily. To productionize an app means to standardize the components be they load rules or reports and also to automate as much as possible. I have seen a customer have 90 load rules for 120 different data sources. Now imagine copying this app 4 times. That’s what they did.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">Not having backups<br />
</span>In the cases where backups were being performed, the resulting backup would be rendered useless over 50% of the time. Systems I work on will have a 7 day history of data for the business folks to use to recover on their own. Over half of all customers I’ve visited that were running Essbase / Hyperin Planning had improper backups. Recently I came across a customer where they were intentionally not backing up Essbase because they said the data existed in their data mart. While that may be true, the Essbase install was on Unix. They were not qualified to reinstall Essbase on their Unix so the backups would in fact be very important. They were very fortunate in that they never experienced a hardware failure that would have exposed this situation.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">No development environment or even a development planning application on production<br />
</span>It’s scary working without a safety net. That’s was working without a development server is like. Even worse is running Hyperion Planning without a copy of the app to test things out on. This is a recipe for disaster. There’s no excuse to not have an extra copy of an Essbase application for tinkering purposes. Another app on production is easy but not best practice. It’s better to have another server whereby development work will not impact production.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">No change control process<br />
</span>As Essbase administrators, we usually don’t have to deal with change control (IT speak for taking a long time to get a change into production but making sure nothing bad will happen when implemented), but there is a responsibility to make sure we’ve tested things before placing them into production. After a few screwups, you’ll lose this right, and possibly the admin will start working for IT with a whole bunch of red tape and paperwork.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">No remote access to the network<br />
</span>Hyperion software is much more than just an application. There are steps and processes that can take hours to run. Most of these tasks must be performed in the off hours. To maximize user uptime (and satisfaction), it is absolutely essential that Hyperion admins have remote access. This means that they should be able to do everything from home that they can do at work. All too often, IT considers Hyperion administrators as a typical business user. Hyperion software is client server based, and the user community can range in the hundreds. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">No one knows how to open a ticket with Oracle support<br />
</span>This can be a 3 day process getting setup for the first time. You need your SSID number and no one can ever find this number. Oracle support is one of many tools you have to help troubleshoot issues. More than half the time, issues that are encountered have nothing to do with a bug in the software but rather a misunderstanding about how a feature works. The support site is metalink3.oracle.com. Your experience with the support group will vary. If your issue is clearly defined in a way that they can understand, you might get lucky, and they’ll quickly inform you that the feature is not designed to work that way, it will be an enhancement request, they can’t reproduce the error, or it might be a bug. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">Insufficient access on desktop computer and only 1 pc for the admin<br />
</span>In too many cases IT has gotten overzealous in controlling rights on pc’s. Okay, maybe not overzealous but Hyperion Admins are not a business user. They are themselves a system administrator of sorts and they need certain access and tools to do their job properly. Many of my clients can not even open a dos window because their pc’s are so locked down. I propose that all Hyperion admins have at least 2 machines. They don’t need to be the latest and greatest but given the nature of the administration tasks, rebooting a desktop machine is very, very inconvenient. When I’m running a project if it’s Essbase I request 2 client machines for myself. If it’s planning for my team I request about 5 client machines in addition to using our laptops. It’s best for a customer to provide these machines because consultants in their spare time can perform software compatibility testing while they are working. This task does not fall within the duties of consultants but they can greatly assist in showing how client installs work and help work through issues. Consultants usually get admin rights. The business users and admins very rarely have admin rights. Some of the Hyperion administration software does not work well if it’s not run as admin. These are issues that would take an IT group a long time to resolve on their own.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;">No access to the server logs / app folder<br />
</span>While arguments can be made that the Hyperion Administrator doesn’t have to have access to the server, who is going to perform the following tasks for them:<br />
-monitor server for .xcp files in the bin directory<br />
-monitor server for .xcp files in the app directories<br />
-schedule batch jobs to run nightly<br />
-analyze the app logs for long retrieval time.<br />
-perform log parsing periodically<br />
<br />
I was at one client that had over 300 .xcp app files on their Essbase server. No one ever knew the server was crashing. No one knew to look for these files, IT had the access but not the knowledge and the business folks did not have either the access or the knowledge.<br />
<br />
While there are many other items that are important, I find that when I'm at various client sites I end up addressing these issues time and time again. <br />
<br />
hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-4359608032465725742008-10-14T11:03:00.004-05:002008-10-14T11:18:20.336-05:00HPT Implementation:web form based security is not sufficient...I've just come across an instance in a hyperion planning system 9.3.1 implementaion where a few accounts were set to read only by using a row definition setting in a planning web form. Having this feature available to us as developers sounds pretty handy until you think about the consequences. This will lock down the cell for web forms and smartview if used in the web form mode. If however your users will have access to smartview adhoc (if they have smartview they have this) or the excel addin with "essbase write" access provisioned to them, this cell is wide open for users to change the values.<br /><br />Why might you want a cell to be read only? You could have a business rule that populates the value based on drivers or some other metric, this account could be pre-seeded, or only admin personnel should be able to update this account.<br /><br />What are some workarounds that are a better best practice?<br />-in planning under dimensions, give all users read access only to this specific account. (have a group created for all users, preferably 2 groups, all users read and all users write)<br />-in essbase / planning, make a new account that is a dynamic calc that merely points to this member. By having the property set to dynamic calc, planning will automatically set the cell to read only.<br /><br />This is similar to a project (large datawarehouse) where everyone thought that securing access to specific web analysis forms and financial reporting reports would limit users access to the entire essbase cube data. While they did not allow access to the excel addin, they did allow users to create their own web analysis reports. I mentioned that while our 85 security filters did limit access to data based on the entitiy dimension it did not eliminate the users from seeing the data that made up these reports. The customer was just overwhelmed with the project and said it was good enough.<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-14929137884422595852008-09-24T09:22:00.002-05:002008-09-24T09:26:17.742-05:00HPT Infrastructure: Top 5 wastes of an infrastructure consultant’s time<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Top 5 wastes of an infrastructure consultant’s time<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>There are many reasons a project can go over-budget. In the world of Hyperion Infrastructure the most common ones can be avoided.<span style=""> </span>If you take the time to completely understand all the tasks needed of them before your infrastructure consultant arrived, you would save a great deal of money.<span style=""> </span>Or, perhaps, be able to spend that time learning about your environment and its care and feeding.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">1) Download the software before the consultant gets there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>When in doubt, download it. If you download something that you don’t need it is ok, but if you don’t get everything you pay for a consultant to watch a status-bar!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">2) Create your databases and give the proper permissions.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>Normally you'll receive a list of Databases (or user/schemas in the case of oracle) along with a list of permission.<span style=""> </span>Make sure you follow this, in the case of FDM there are special requirements that need to be met. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">3) Order the servers AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>I know that no-one wants to have capital expenses depreciating on their cost center any longer than they have to. But please remember that your IT department is likely to be very busy with everyone else’s requests.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore next day shipping doesn’t mean that the vender has the servers in stock or that they are even built, it just means when they get around to shipping it, you’ll get it the day after.<span style=""> </span>I've honestly been stuck waiting (and billing) until Wednesday of the *SECOND WEEK* for equipment to be ready.<span style=""> </span>My record before that was noon on a Friday (in that case we were merely waiting for a network cable to be plugged in).<span style=""> </span>In any case I cannot stress enough ORDER YOUR EQUIPMENT EARLY PLEASE!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">4) Ensure that you have the appropriate meetings with your infrastructure consultant ahead of time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>Only you can know what’s appropriate.<span style=""> </span>I’ve had simple customers want 10 meetings about something simple (waste of your time) and I’ve had extremely complex customers with complicated (and battling) political factions have only one short meeting.<span style=""> </span>If you have 1 it guy that can do it all, have one good meeting.<span style=""> </span>If you have a complicated it department (even if the environment isn’t) get all the parties involved.<span style=""> </span>It's NOT going to help anything if we finish an installation with automatic deployment, get ready to go live, and find out that your IT department won’t support you because it has to be manually deployed with custom ports!!!<span style=""> </span>This HAS HAPPENED more than once!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">5) Ensure that your IT department is on-board with the installation.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>I've been at customers who ticked their IT department off so badly that they wouldn’t provide simple DBA support.<span style=""> </span>I can handle this if given the keys to the kingdom, and most likely if your IT department behaves like this your environment will be better off with me doing everything anyways.<span style=""> </span>However, I will one day leave. While I very much appreciate all the after hours billing, you won’t appreciate waiting for me to be done for the day with my present client so that I can put your production environment back together after someone mistakenly trashed it!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">6) Get involved with the installation <span style="font-size: 10pt;">(you didn’t think that I would actually stop at 5 did you?)<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""> </span>The preferred method of installation is for me to build the first environment so that your applications consultants (or internal people) can get working/testing ASAP (remember the applications consultants are billing you too). This is the fastest way to bring an environment up.<span style=""> </span>But on the second installation PLEASE sit with me in a conference room (bring a projector please) and we'll do the installation with you driving.<span style=""> </span>Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to bill you every single day to Webex in and handle your minutia, but it's far more efficient if you understand your environment and can handle these things by yourself.<span style=""> </span>I suggest having at least one IT person in the room and your Hyperion support person as well. This way there is always at least 2 people who understand exactly what Hyperion is doing, and can come to the rescue at quarter end when the CFO is shaking his/her fist at you because they don’t have the numbers to report.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">pp<br /></p>Howard Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-65466402086176524932008-08-19T12:00:00.019-05:002008-09-24T09:22:40.732-05:00HPT Implementation: hyperion planning users will use the webforms, really?HPT stands for hyperion planning tips<br /><br />**start of disclaimer**<br />Contrary to my statement above, webforms can be a very useful data input tool. This blog entry is an attempt to address a shortcoming every project must address. The implementation of hyperion planning where existing excel spreadsheets are turned into web forms does no one any favors. The entire budgeting process should be analyzed and where possible turn the budget data entry items into driver based metrics (ie. some expenses go up as headcount goes up, etc.). By creating more of a driver based budgeting tool, users can get into the mode of testing out different versions in the same time it might take to perform the raw data entry task of the old system.<br />**end of disclaimer**<br /><br />Bottoms up budgeting really does mean bottoms up.<br /><br />With many implementations, an initial r0llout is to a regional head. They'll do the budget for all their facilities. That's the thought until they realize they have to go into these webforms for every location that they manage. So, if they are in charge of 80 locations, someone is going to have to open a web form, select a dropdown, select go, then update the web form. Then hit save. This process multiplied by 80 or 100 is overwhelming, especially when the web form has 100 rows on it. At one client, I let them worry about this until I let the cat out of the bag and showed them the excel addin. This was on system 9.2.3 where smartview wasn't really "up to snuff". The only problem was they saw that "crutch" as the panacea to all their problems. Fortunately I was able to convince them to use this for only certain metrics that were drivers for the system by location. Smartview could help make the web forms less painful but make sure you prototype your solution before showing it to the customer. There is definately a learning curve with this tool. There is a reason why the <strong>essbase security role</strong> was added to planning in 9.3.1.<br /><br /><strong>Hyperion Planning users:</strong> will your users really use the web forms?<br /><br />This question really need to be addressed at the beginning of the project and not at the end. I've seen multiple (many) occasions where a system is not only designed but built with the thought that web forms will be used exclusively.<br /><br />Watch out. When that UAT session takes place be sure to duck for cover when users realize they will have to retype their entire budget into a web form. All the work that has gone into tweaking their spreadsheet budgeting is now thrown out.<br /><br />For some customers this can be forced upon the users but for most companies your controllers and other users are already swamped with work.<br /><p>This leads us back to that good old trusted essbase - excel addin. Using this tool, you can create templates that can be slammed into essbase directly without the overhead of planning (web forms, smartview, app servers, web servers). The drawback however is that this is not something that you can hand out to your users on the eleventh hour without customizations. Due to the freeform nature of the tool, some training definately needs to happen. It's even relatively easy to add some custom vba to lock it down but this is development. Development takes time. This data entry method should really be vetted out during the design phase and not the UAT sessions.</p><p>In closing, there is nothing wrong with web forms. With the new composite form they can be really powerful. You can have the top half show a high level total and the bottom half could consist of various drivers. After updating a driver you can see the results on the same screen without having to change forms.<br /></p><p>This topic was just one of many reoccuring themes that every hyperion planning implementation needs to address.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p>hj</p>Howard Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-22772415073423107662008-05-27T18:47:00.006-05:002008-09-18T15:20:41.912-05:00HPT Implementation: taking care of your resources...As planning projects are getting larger and more complicated it's more important than ever to have the right resources. One key to getting the right resources is to provide 4 day workweeks and avoid at all possible the working on weekends. I haven't been on a project yet where working a weekend straight through will result in a successful project. There is usually so much input required from the customer that having consultants working crazy hours without end users to validate the system is just wasted money. In every case that I have witnessed, the need for this type of work schedule was due to changing requirements from the customer that were somehow missed (either the right questions were not asked during creation of the design document or the customer had new ideas after the system was already designed).<br /><br />If you're with a consulting firm and this is not a #1 initiative for your consultants then your consultants will be leaving very soon. Your competitors are offering this if you fail to. If you're the final customer your pain will be even greater because it is very difficult getting hyperion resources hired.<br /><br />Let's say you get phase 1 of your project complete and you're ramping up for phase 2 only to realize that all of your resources (employees, contractors, etc) have all decided not to follow you into battle. Think how much talent the customer just lost by having all the developers walk out the door? Was it really worth hitting that deadline to lose your entire technical team? I was at a customer where 3 employees quit within a week after being fed up with working xmas, new years, and endless weekends. The real pain point that that these employees were there for the duration of the 3 year project only to leave right after go live of phase 1. The best part of that project was that the 3 project sponsors, who didn't work any weekends and who were responsible for changing scope got big promotions for hitting their live dates while some of the employees on the team didn't have jobs after the project was over.<br /><br />I've been present at a client when the "style" was to use profanity at my team. Profanity in and of itself has never really bothered me but it's a little different when it's directed directly at you with the words "this is unacceptable. You're all going to be bleeping fired." It's a little dishearting to hear these words on week 2 of a 5 month project. How motivated do you think we were to go over and above? How much extra stuff do you think snuck into the scope without a change order request?<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-26531831038285010372008-04-17T05:05:00.005-05:002008-04-17T07:04:54.031-05:00Hyperion Planning tips: entry 1From time to time I stumble upon little tweaks that greatly affect deliverable functionality in planning. This is the first blurb in a series that will be updated over time. These apply to hyperion planning 9.3.1.1 p1. Most of these tips probably work with 9.2 as well but I can't confirm or deny.<br /><br /><ol><li>-enabling YTD dynamic time series in planning</li><li>-creating alternate period rollups</li><li>-use of substitution variables</li><li>-top of dimension properties in planning</li><ol><li>storage properties can be set<br /></li></ol></ol><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. enabling YTD dynamic time series in planning:</span><br />In order to use ytd dynamic time series you must first rename the year dimension to something else. I tend to use Years. Year is a reserved word and using this as your dimension name will prevent you from being able to perform dynamic time series.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2.creating alternate period rollups:</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br />If you'd like to create your own alternate period rollups you can now do this on the planning side and push them into essbase. You could make your own ytd rollups, qtd rollups or what ever you dream up. While adding them in the web interface it's a little painful as it's not too easy to reorder the members but it does work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3.use of substitution variables:</span><br />We can now use substitution variables inside of member formulas. This applies to essbase as well as planning and probably came out with maybe system 9. This is a huge step forward and might effect every business rule you develop going forward. It could be used for the processing of the current budgeting period, forecast year, or anything you can dream up. I'm a little embarrased that I didn't stumble upon this (co worker tried it and told me it worked. I still didn't believe him) earlier. I need to spend more time reading the release notes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. top of dimension properties in planning:</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">storage properties can be set:</span><br />Now you can utilize some of those essbase skills in tuning a database. We can now set the storage property of the top dimension nodes. While we've probably all created our own work arounds to reduce blocks, this makes it a lot easier to "tighten up" our databases while working within the planning infrastructure.<br /><br />as always feel free to correct me or better yet, send in some tips that you've stumbled upon..<br /><br />you can contact me anonymously at hjohnson@john-assoc.com<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-28538959113276295032008-04-10T07:11:00.005-05:002008-04-10T09:12:41.012-05:00migrating skillset from essbase to hyperion planning:This will be revised as I stumble upon other major topics but here's a start at some of the major components that must be understood by an essbase consultant for them to move into the hyperion planning world. (why an essbase guy should morph into hyperion planning is a topic for another day...)<br /><br />For an essbase guy to morph into a hyperion planning consultant the following must be known and understood.<br /><br />-yes, essbase is the back end for planning<br />-a planning app is comprised of an application and 1 or multiple plan types.<br />-a few database settings must be known when the application is created for the first time. Once created, these items cannot be changed. Among them are:<br /> -starting year for model<br /> -number of plan types. You can have up to 3 for planning. If you create only 1 when creating the application, you will not be able to create type2 and type 3 later. There are some additional modules that bring the total plantype up to 5 (capx, workforce planning)<br />-a planning application that contains more than 1 plan type will exist on the essbase side as an application with 1 or more databases. Each plan type translates into a database.<br />-the outline meta data is stored in a relational repository. When you want to modify the outline changes are made to the repository. Then they are pushed to essbase via a refresh operation.<br />-when a refresh operation is being performed, it affects all plan types at the same time. You cannot choose to update only 1 plan type when there are 3 existing.<br /> -changes to the repository are made thru using either planning web interface (if not using architect), HAL (product is on life support and will sunset soon), DIM (informatica with planning adapter), or enterprise architect. <br />-do not play in the relational tables (unless you really know what you are doing)<br />-do not, do not, do not modify the outline directly on the essbase side unless you really know what you are doing (with system 9.3.1.1 other than some formulas, this is not that necessary)<br />-do not touch the system until you can confirm that backups are being performed properly. This means that the relational metadata tables and the outline must be backed up with the same date stamp.<br />-do not go home at night until the refresh has completed successfully.<br />-the worst thing that can happen is to have a planning model where the refresh will not run. The system will be up and work but your connection between the metadata and essbase is broken and you will never be able to update the outline again until the refresh completes successfully<br />-security in planning is not as flexible as that in essbase. You cannot have an account be writeable in budget and read only in forecast (assuming budget and forecast are both writeable). The filters are based on one dimension at a time.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />If anything above doesn't sound correct please correct me....<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-14528572092784833892008-03-19T21:09:00.009-05:002008-04-03T06:56:55.527-05:00Hyperion Planning Implementation Team MakeupFor a typical Hyperion Planning project (3-4 months) I believe the following resources are sufficient. This is assuming the etl duties are owned by the customer. This is often not the case and the <br />I believe most Hyperion Planning projects can be implemented with a team consisting of the following makeup:<br /><br />customer: 4 resources<br />#1 part time project manager<br />#2 subject matter expert business<br />#3 subject matter expert business<br />#4 tech / infr resource<br />#5 erp system resource (in charge of extracting necessary data)<br /><br />Now on the consulting side (consulting team) this would be my breakdown if I had a choice (3 necessary, 4 optional):<br /><br />#1-part time project manager (not the customer) that is there during the presales phase. This resource is onsite full time in the beginning and then tapers off to 8-12 hours a week. They don't have to be an expert on Hyperion Planning but this person should know the basics. The goal of this person is to be MR Change Control (or MS). On a recent project, my "part time project manager" played this role to such a tee, the meer mention of his name would stop all discussions of new functionality that was deemed essential but not discovered during the design phase<br /><br /><br />#2 -planning architect<br />It's good to have someone that's performed at least 5 Hyperion Planning implementations. But if this person is not a hard core essbase guy then you'd better have a ringer as your #3.<br /><br />#3 essbase architect<br />-essbase architect. I'd much rather have someone that knows essbase hard core than a 2nd chair in planning in this role.<br /><br />#4 (optional) junior resource<br />-someone to build web forms and reports<br /><br />Here's a key point. The more seasoned and senior your resources, the fewer bodies you'll need. I once heard about a project where recruiters said they needed 14 hyperion planning resources. I ended up passing because they were a little stingy on the rate and something didn't seem right. It turns out that the project was shutdown after a few months. I'm not sure the scope of the project but there are only so many consultants that can work on a planning system at the same time. There's only 1 outline per plan type and only 1 person can make changes to the hierarchies at any point in time. I just can't see how to coordinate that many consultants with business requirements that always change on the fly.<br /><br />In choosing your resources for your project team take a little time to read the resumes of the actual worker bees that will be showing up. Many times the tech guru that was present during the dog and pony show is not available when the project actually gets started. <br /><br />Also, when choosing candidates, you're much better off getting a seasoned essbase developer (4.x, 5.x 6.5, or even 7.x) on the team than you are having 3 additional planning resources or even requiring system 9 experience. (have you guessed I'm an essbase guy. Yes, I'm proficient in 9.3.1 p1 but as stated, I'll take a real essbase developer over someone that's implemented planning 9 times. I can teach planning to an essbase guy in under a day but you can't teach essbase in 1 day) System 9 experience on essbase doesn't really require too many additional skills. I'll write about this later. "what you need to know about essbase to retool up to system 9".<br /><br />In closing, there are too many Hyperion Planning projects going south out there. Why are they having problems? Because their database size is out of this world. In most every case, having a real essbase developer on the team (the gruff type that tells you when you are being stupid) could have provided insight as to the feasibility of the design months before go live. Remember the underlying database is essbase. All essbases rules of thumb apply (block size, database explosion, calc times, etc.). By having a hard core essbase developer on site, you likely could have even changed direction (scope, functionality) to hit the live date. Given the fact that there is currently a resource shorttage of system 9 folks out there, if I were a hiring manager, I'd start paying more attention to all those resumes of essbase developers that do not have system 9 experience and throw them on my key Hyperion Planning projects. <br /><br />just a thought.<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-65566713637385440352008-03-16T19:47:00.010-05:002008-04-02T18:22:41.130-05:00Hyperion Planning 9.3.1: Time to upgradeHaving 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<br />-the open ldap directory getting out of sync with microsoft active directory (a batch utility is available to sync these)<br />-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")<br /><br />Now with 9.3.1.1 there have been some improvements.<br />9.3.1.1 has 3 new security roles:<br />-offline user (might not be new to 9.3.1.1)<br />-mass allocation<br />-essbase write access<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />ex1.<br />-actuals could be in to top panel<br />-budget can be in the lower panel<br /><br />ex2.<br />-top panel could be total entity or company consolidated<br />-bottom panel could be the current budget<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-4171971676847373832008-02-26T20:31:00.004-06:002008-02-29T20:10:41.943-06:00Hyperion Consulting Market is very hot right now...Right now the Hyperion consulting market is very hot. Some projects I've recently had to pass on were:<br /><ul><li>a 3 week hal project</li><li>a simple 3 week system 9.3 essbase upgrade</li><li>another system 9.3 essbase / reports install</li><li>2 different planning architect roles.</li><li>a senior HFM architect role (DC)</li></ul>I can help reduce your downtime between projects. I'm looking for very senior level independents out there that specialize in Hyperion. If you're a senior level independent consultant and would like another tool to help keep the downtime at a minimum, I'd encourage you to send me an email. I've even had to go outside and have my customer use a generic recruiter because we needed extra help. Right now my primary recruiting focus is top tier independent Hyperion talent (5 yrs exp+). I'm also gathering folks that are full time admins or consultants looking for a change of scenery. I get a call every few weeks from customers looking for full time admins. While my primary focus is being a hands on consultant (to pay the bills), I believe I can provide value in filtering out the really good projects for other independents out there. Just think how much more we can make (independents) if we could reduce the number of middlemen between us and the customer. I had one project where there were 3 middlemen. I got the rate I was looking for but was the customer really getting the best bang for the buck?<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-22956118348411617152007-06-19T23:00:00.000-05:002007-06-19T23:32:59.359-05:00who installed your system 9? did you get any documentation?Beware of who's performing your install of hyperion system 9.<br /><br />I have a client that has just been swindled by paying for 3 full days of install time for an infrastructure person from a hyperion preferred partner, yet got no documentation. There was material deemed as confidential or proprietary to the firm.<br /><br />I know for a fact that some config files were changed and also that scripts were run on the sql server side. These scripts created some tables and user id's. These are items that would have been performed during the hyperion installs but these guys chose to write their own scripts. Their install could not be reproduced by the client (me) since these steps and scripts were not provided when asked for.<br /><br />Due to the fact that no documentation will be forthcoming, the servers are going to be reimaged and I'll perform the installs myself fully documenting all server settings required to get everything up and running.<br /><br />The environments need to be reimaged for 2 reasons. Our dev environment is coming online and this firm was not going to be used to stage that environment. This would then mean that our 2 environments were not installed in the same manner. There would be inherit differences between them. Future applications of patches would not yield the appropriate comfort level that a patch that worked in dev would also work in production without issue.<br /><br />Apparently an important discussion to have with your hyperion preferred partner (really any consultant or consulting firm) is:<br /><br />"Will we get full documentation as to how / what is installed on our servers?"<br /><br />"Anything that is run on our servers is our (clients) property."<br /><br />"There will be no running of scripts on our servers that we will not receive."<br /><br />thoughts or modifications?<br /><br />I was thinking something short and sweet. Not too much legal stuff to require lawyers.<br /><br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-565044703449292069.post-22076925634012897652007-06-19T16:54:00.000-05:002007-06-19T22:37:58.296-05:00hyperion system 9.3 patch 1- license server is dead~July 27 release date.<br /><br />Before performing any installs / upgrades make sure you take into account the death of the license server. I think anyone who's done any backend Hyperion installs has grown to loathe this tool. It can take weeks to get this configured only to find out you're missing a feature you paid for. <br /><br />It looks like IE7 is going to make it into this patch level.<br /><br />hjHoward Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05527914977146810583noreply@blogger.com5