TM1Web - Hyperlink or Action Button to open a Cube View

[ExApplix]

I am designing a dashboard for the end-user which will have Actions Buttons to open the realted Websheets. But I also want to provide links on the Dashboard to users by which they can open Cube Views (which are saved within the Applications folder) rather then opening the Views from the Navigation Pane at left.

I am not aware of any such option in TM1 and just wondering if anyone knows a workaround to this issue.

[rmackenzie]

You can use drillthroughs to navigate from a DBRW on a websheet to a cube view (not necessarily in the same cube).

In some circumstance, this is not intuitive UI, but it works.

[lotsaram]

This one has me curious. Could you use an action button to call a drill process and pass in the parameters for elements in each dimension to mimic the effects of drilling through on right-click from a cube view or DBRW. I haven't tried this but I suspect it might work, in any case I would be interested to know if it does.

(You would have to pass in the process name and params from cell links as there is no way to select a "}" process with an action button)

[ExApplix]

My end-user want to navigate to the Cube Views so that slice and dice the data.

So even if the drill-through works as sugges it wont help in this case.

Any ideas/workarounds?

[lotsaram]

My end-user want to navigate to the Cube Views so that slice and dice the data.

So even if the drill-through works as sugges it wont help in this case.

Any ideas/workarounds?

If an action button worked to drill to a view I'm not sure how this would not work to "slice and dice data". What exactly do you mean "it won't help in this case"?

You could very easily use the TM1 Web URL API to hyperlink to a named public view, what's wrong with that?

[ExApplix]

You could very easily use the TM1 Web URL API to hyperlink to a named public view, what's wrong with that?

If I can hyperlink to the view using TM1 Web URL API then it would be great. Can I put that hyperlink on the Websheet or in Action Button?

I have not worked with TM1 Web URL API before. Please let me know what has to be done to achive this function?

Thanks in advance

[rmackenzie]

This one has me curious. Could you use an action button to call a drill process and pass in the parameters for elements in each dimension to mimic the effects of drilling through on right-click from a cube view or DBRW. I haven't tried this but I suspect it might work, in any case I would be interested to know if it does.

(You would have to pass in the process name and params from cell links as there is no way to select a "}" process with an action button)

Works all the way in Excel and TM1 Web, but no active form/ cube-viewer is displayed.

My end-user want to navigate to the Cube Views so that slice and dice the data.

So even if the drill-through works as sugges it wont help in this case.

The drill-through will open a cube view (which can be pre-defined) and the user will be able to slice and dice and do all the normal stuff. If there is no DBRW on the page then obviously this isn't going to work.

If I can hyperlink to the view using TM1 Web URL API then it would be great. Can I put that hyperlink on the Websheet or in Action Button?

I have not worked with TM1 Web URL API before. Please let me know what has to be done to achive this function?

I don't know if it is possible for you to use the URL API from a websheet hyperlink - I've not tried that before - but it sounds worth a go. I suspect that the effect might not be totally what you want because the new page will open in a different page to TM1 Web (there is a workaround for that somewhere on this forum). Typically, the URL API is used to put TM1 Web content into another web page totally outside the TM1 Web environment. E.g. IFRAME tags or Sharepoint.

It's a shame that Lotsa's suggestion appears not to work. If someone knows something clever about making the RETURNVIEWHANDLE work in this context then maybe it has some more legs...

[lotsaram]

Bummer that calling a drill from an action button seems not to work. I guess it might be some safety mechanism to prevent a process stalling and causing a server hang if calling a drill from a ProcessExecute. But still it would be handy from an application design perspective to be able to call a view from a button.

Using the URL API in websheets to open views or other websheets works perfectly fine except that the link will open in a new browser window you can use the simple trick of holding the Ctrl key while clicking thie link to open a new tab rather than new window which is much better but it is still bad and lazy UI design to not recognize "hey this link is internal to TM1 web, let's open a tab within the web application". It would be great if Ben's workaround was just part of TM1 Web's follow hyperlink function without having to put in a hack yourself.

[ExApplix]

Is there any help availabe for the TM1Web API? I want to understand the Syntax.

The only example which I could find in the manual is:

Code: Select all

http://boston/TM1WebMain.aspx?action=OpenObject&type=Cubeviewer&value=plan_BudgetPlan$$Budget%20Input%20Detailed$$PUBLIC&title_plan_business_unit=Canada&UseIndex=no

But couldnt find anything which explains it.

[lotsaram]

Which documentation did you look at and how hard did you look?

In the Developer's Guide there is a whole chapter called "Developing Custom Web Applications with the URL API". It has quite a few examples of the URL syntax with explanation. That would be a good place to start.

[paulsimon]

Hi

I have done this to open both TM1 Web Sheets and TM1 Views. I just used the Excel =HYPERLINK() Function on the Web Sheet and then built up the appropriate URL String according to what they have picked using normal Excel functions.

There were a couple of issues:

1) The HYPERLINK function is limited to 255 characters. Converting any Aliased elements back to their codes can be a good idea.
2) In TM1 Web it insists on opening the sheet in a new IE Window. However, after that all the sheets/views open in the same new window. I therefore used a launch sheet, and then the rest opened in the new window. I put jumps to the next stage in the process on each sheet so the user never really needed to return to the launch sheet. Mostly I used jumps to other sheets, but I provided the option to open a View for cases when they wanted to do more drilling around, or where more experienced users could configure a view that was more suitable for their data entry than a sheet. If anyone discovers a way around this issue, please let me know.

I used

Range rWebServer
=DBR(rInfoCube,"Any","WebServer")
This should be the machine name of your web server

For Views I used

Range rViewStub
="http://"&rWebServer&"/TM1Web/TM1WebMain.aspx?action=OpenObject&type=CubeViewer&Value="&rCubeOnly&"$$"&rListView&"$$PUBLIC"

The Range rCubeOnly should be just the name of the Cube ie not prefixed by the name of the TM1 Server.
rListView is the name of the List View on the Cube to which you want them to be able to jump.

I then added to the stub by adding on the appropriate dimension name and dimension element pairs

=IF((LEN(E23)+LEN(B24)+LEN(D24)+21)<255,E23&"&title_"&B24&"="&D24,E23)

Where E23 is the URL so far, B24 is the Dimension Name and D24 is the Element Name

The IF is just to check that you don't go over 255 characters.

As you drag the formula down alongside your list of dimension names and the current element selections, you eventually end up with something like this:

http://cognostm1/TM1Web/TM1WebMain.aspx ... t$$Account List$$PUBLIC&title_Yr_Mth=CL_2011-M04&title_Version=Forecast

The SS is Dollar Dollar is case you can't see it

Finally I added &AutoRecalc=on. (Yes I know AutoRecalc is not always the greatest of ideas but it suited the users)

You can also specify Row and Column but I didn't need to do that.

The scheme I used for Web Sheets was a bit more involved so I won't go into it here.

The URL API documentation is not too bad so I would definitely recommend reviewing it to find the options that are appropriate to your application.

Personally I would prefer to see a proper application builder for TM1 Front Ends but the URL API + Excel gets you part of the way there.

Regards

Paul Simon

[Olivier]

Thanks for sharing the approach Paul !

Concatenation and hyperlink excel function...

I have not implemented anything like that yet as our Tm1 web usage is rather limited for now...
but I just love the excel formula driven workaround !

[AlinaR]

Hi PaulSimon,

When implementing your solution with TM1Web API, I found out that when I open the cube views linked with the solution provided by you, is imposible to close them, as I'm prompted with whites screen on the tabs loaded. If I come back to the initial websheet were I've put all my links, and I click again on a link, in the new tab window, this will be again opened, if I do 6 times clicks, I will have 6 times the same cube views. Do you know by chance how to avoid this issue, and have the possibility to close the opened tabs?

I will really appreciate your feedback.

Thx,
AlinaR

[tianoklein]

I have the same issue...

But to me, is helpful if I could open any webpage with parameters as row and column that user clicked.
Anyone have any ideia?

[jpjosey]

Greetings

I had a look through the URL API documentation mentioned above, and I can find no sign of an argument that turns off row zero suppression. I turned my zero suppression off in the view used for the Cubeview, however when opening the Cubeview via the URL it defaults "Suppress Zeros on Rows" to ON. It's not a massive problem, but it would be nice to have the option. Is it undocumented, or is this just something we have to live with?

Thanks

[mce]

TM1 Drill functionality does not work when cube view is opened via TM1Web URL API

[mce]

Action buttons to move to a different websheet does not work when the websheet of the action button is originally opened via TM1Web URL API.

[ykud]

Action buttons to move to a different websheet does not work when the websheet of the action button is originally opened via TM1Web URL API.

What version of PA you're on? It was a bug we saw in one of the 2.0.6 IFs for tm1web, it should be fixed in 2.0.9.1

[mce]

What version of PA you're on? It was a bug we saw in one of the 2.0.6 IFs for tm1web, it should be fixed in 2.0.9.1

we observed the problem in 2.0.9.1 in IBM demo server and in 2.0.8 in our client.