TM1 workflow

[gnampoothiry]

Hello,

Can anyone please share their experience in implementing TM1 workflow?

I would like to know the pros and cons for TM1 workflow.

Thanks,
Girish

[David Usherwood]

Pros
It's pretty
Cons
It doesn't actually do anything - ie it does not actually lock submissions. Iboglix would point out you can write your own TIs but why?
9.5 Contributor actually does (though I need to confirm this).

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Are you talking about planning manager (upto release 9.4.X I guess) or Contributor?

I have no experience with the workflow in contributor but what I have heard about it leads me to believe it is better than TM1 Workflow pre 9.5 aka Planning Manager.

I do have experience with Planning Manager.

The Good: It can be customized. A lot. Basically it is all set in cubes using TI. Hence you can completely modify its behaviour, by changing the code underneath.
The Bad: The out of the box functionalities are limited and imo cumbersome to set up.
The Ugly (1): Depending on the clients requirements some of his requirements may not be possible at all or really require large (and time consuming) modifications to the TI processes and cubes underneath. If you do not have advanced TI skills you can basically forget about modifying alltogether.
The Ugly (2): I can not compare to workflow functions in other tools (maybe they aren't any better) but with planning manager I always felt like it was a feature added more so they could show it in demo's rather than something they actually expected a lot of people to use.

[rodrigo]

I like the email "alert" feature and the task history that can be saved to know the comments about why the budget is rejected, the usage is easy, but I agree with the comment about "locking out" budget data, the user can still change submitted data if the budget versión is open for this contribution user, what can be solved with some tricks.

The 9.5 release notes this note is written: "In some upcoming major release following TM1 9.5, we will no longer support TM1 Workflow. The core capabilities of TM1 Workflow will be provided through alternative Workflow functionality in some future TM1 release."

This alternative is Contributor? because this is talking about the future, and this message is on 9.5. Now contributor is available,



cheers..

[lotsaram]

I agree pretty much with Jeroen's comments.

TM1 workflow works brilliantly on TM1 web but make sure the fast task bindings option is enabled otherwise it can be very sluggish for large task dimensions, and it is "pretty" on the web (clunky and ugly in Excel though, I would only ever recommend implementing for a web UI.)

Workflow alone doesn't do anything with security but it isn't too hard to edit the TIs that run workflow to maintain security on the relevant dimensions or cubes.

It is very customisable and can represent a "true workflow" as opposed to a graphical representation of security access and task completion status. The admin GUI is adequate for small and manually set task dimensions however for anything serious with dozens to hundreds of contributors (i.e. where you woudl actually bother implementing a workflow solution) it is not really workable as it would be too slow and tedious to configure workflow. For a "real life" implementation there must be a flat file load of workflow structure and task assignment, either use the Excel VBA workflow creation tool from Applix or write your own in TI (much much faster but requires significant development.)

It is interesting that 9.5 supports both the old TM1 Workflow and Contributor. TM1 Workflow is definitely much more flexible but it is also definitely not easy to work with unless you are a TI black-belt. You would think it's days are numbered (but then again we have been thinking that for the last 2 -3 years and it is still here in 9.5!)

[SueZhaZa]

Currently in my new project they insisted on having tm1 workflow.. the tm1 server is 9.5.2... can i install workflow 10.1? and i dont really understand how to make this workflow works... *dumbfounded*
HELP!!!!!

[tomok]

Currently in my new project they insisted on having tm1 workflow.. the tm1 server is 9.5.2... can i install workflow 10.1? and i dont really understand how to make this workflow works... *dumbfounded*
HELP!!!!!

No, you can't mix versions. You need to install the TM1 Workflow that came with 9.5.2. If you don't really understand how to use it then read the manual. It covers pretty much everything you'll need to know about it.