Building workflow

[tosca1978]

Hi all,

I am attempting to buid submission/approval workflow into a model that I have built. I have a plan but would welcome any tips from others that have done this before. A brief overview of the model:

Prodcution model that holds actuals and budget units produced by month. Every month end users will be required to enter updated forecast data and comments where the variance between actual vs Budget for the current month is greater than 10%. Data entry is made via TM1 web.

The workflow requirements are:
- Submitter can submit:
- Only if he has added a comment in the variance cube where the variance between actual and forecast = >10%
- Once submitting that element of the Approval hierarchy is locked for data input
- Up to a maximum of 5 reviewer's can accept/reject
- Not all reviewers need to accept or reject
- If ANY reviewers reject then activity is rejected
- If rejected the activity in the Approval hierarchy is unlocked for further data input

So my plan is:
- Create a status cube with 2 dims - Approval Hierarchy and Status measures.
- A rule can pick up if variance is greater than 10% + if a comment has been added.
- Action buttons (or maybe just DBRW's) from the Status worksheet can send flags into Status cube
- Create element level security on the Approval Hierarchy dimension with a rule getting flags from the Status Cube

I think it should work but I maybe missing something glaringly obvious. Therefore any tips would be welcomed.

Also - I am aware that TM1 Web Applications (contributor) can accept websheets and enjoy workflow against these (which I think is very good). However, because of the multiple approvers (and the requirement to see which approvers have accepted or rejected) I don't think that I can make this work for this model.

Thanks.

[Harvey]

I have done something like what you describe on a project several years ago.

First let me say that I did my work before Contributor was an option. The easiest path will always be to try to use existing functionality. so make sure you evaluate and test that avenue thoroughly first.

When I made my decision, it was between TM1 Workflow and a custom solution. I could barely get TM1 Workflow to stay stable in Excel long enough to perform an action, so, after two days of frustration, I quoted a custom solution.

My design was similar in concept to yours, although I had different rules surrounding reviewing and accepting contributions. Your idea seems pretty sound, but make sure you consider period in the status cube. You said two dimensions, but you'll also need to consider (at least) the budget year and version so you can repeat the process each budget cycle.

Also, keep in mind that it's pretty frustrating working with action buttons and Excel forms. They never quite work the way you intend and sometimes you need to make silly compromises in your design. If you need it to work in TM1 Web, you have a whole other batch of problems with formatting and functionality.

No matter how you cut it, it's going to be a bit clunky.

Good luck, and it would be interesting to hear how it works out, should you choose to post it here.