Perspectives and Office 2013

[sander]

Hello All,

I have a problem with logging in in perspectives with CAM security and office 2013. At a customer we have several clients installed, Windows 7 office 2010 and Windows 7 and office 2013. All tm1 perspectives 10.1.1.
At all of the office 2013 installs I get the following message;

image001.png (55.11 KiB) Viewed 17236 times

The other installs work perfectly. At all the clients loging in in BI and the tm1 applications portal is no problem.
When I do a google search or a search on this forum on the error message I do not get results on the specific message.
I posted it with IBM support, and I get the answer that Office 2013 isn't supported, so no help from them to be expected.

I know in some cases Office 2013 and Perspectives is working.
see this http://www.tm1forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8867

Anyone of you any idea, other than downgrading to office 2010.

Thnx in advance!

Regards Sander

[jim wood]

We've seen issue with the 64-bit install of office. Can you confirm that you have the 32-bit version installed?

[sander]

Thnx for your reply!

Yes we have the 32-bit version installed.

[sander]

Got feedback from IBM support;

I have heard from product management that Office 2013 will be supported in TM1 10.2 which is due out in September. The initial release will support 32bit Office only with 64bit support being added in a fix pack.

[Alan Kirk]

Got feedback from IBM support;

I have heard from product management that Office 2013 will be supported in TM1 10.2 which is due out in September. The initial release will support 32bit Office only with 64bit support being added in a fix pack.

This'll be interesting.

When I read Microsoft's list of the differences between 32 bit and 64 bit Excel, it put me off the 64 bit version for the foreseeable future. The most noticeable "feature" of 64 bit is:

ActiveX controls library, ComCtl - Any solutions that use these controls do not work. No good alternatives are available for some of these controls.
Third-party ActiveX controls and add-ins - None of these work with the 64-bit version of Office.
NOTE There is no 64-bit version of Visual Basic 6.

VBA6, I think they mean (given that VB6 sat over the top of the VBA6 library), but the effect is the same. Nor is there ever likely to be, I suspect. There hasn't been any significant development aside from a few service packs since VB6 was released way back in 1998. Things like that can really put stuff into perspective. I remember reading O'Reilly's "VB & VBA In A Nutshell" (in paper format, no less) wile sitting on a 747 heading for the US... in late 1999. Yes, it was that long ago.

As a result, many of these objects need to be ported and rewritten.

Which means that if Iboglix support is not "speaking with forked tongue", we'd be looking at a root and branch overhaul of tm1p.xla.

Of course such a thing is well overdue, but with the exception of the Perpetually-Changing-And-Usually-For-The-Worse icon factory, they've given very little sign of putting any effort into the Excel interface in the last, errr... when was 8.3 released again?

Personally I suspect that we'll see a 64 bit Excel version when:
(a) 64 bit Office has >50% market share, if it ever does; and
(b) Support actually puts up the .Net API manual that they forgot to include with 10.1 up for download as well, like they said they were going to do... how long ago now?

[David Usherwood]

I'm thinking it won't be Perspectives which will support O2013 X64, but something new. Don't ask me what that might be

[Alan Kirk]

I'm thinking it won't be Perspectives which will support O2013 X64, but something new. Don't ask me what that might be

If so they'd better get their collective sodding head out of the Java mindspace. While it's not impossible to do, in terms of reliability, stability and an all around "good idea", that sort of thing usually ranks right up there with "Hey, I wonder what would happen if I shoved my face into this vat of boiling cooking oil?"

Of course doing a .Net application which integrates with Excel with would not be impossible and in fact should work quite well, albeit at the cost of giving up support for earlier Excel versions (for practical purposes). However given the way they've all but turned the .Net API into underdeveloped abandonware I can't see the likelihood of that any time soon either.

If you're right it'll be interesting to see what they come up with but if it's a full replacement of Perspectives without tight native Microsoft-based technology (something which seems to be anathema at Armonk these days) I have a horrible shudder running up my spine which is tapping out the Morse code for "Muddler Mk II".

[David Usherwood]

Since it needs to integrate with Excel it couldn't really not use MS-based technology - not that I could speculate as how such a product would be built if IBM decided to go down that route....

[Alan Kirk]

Since it needs to integrate with Excel it couldn't really not use MS-based technology - not that I could speculate as how such a product would be built if IBM decided to go down that route....

It can be done with Java; I've seen it done in a couple of demos with some special interop libraries.

Which is not to say that it was done well...

(And admittedly this was mostly from a propeller-head "can we make this work" perspective than an actual "potential commercial product" perspective.)

However "not done well" is, of course, the defining mantra of Performance Muddler which is why I am greatly perturbed about the possibility that they're just going to do the same sort of thing with any theoretical Perspectives replacement.

[jim wood]

Oracle have been big users of the old Java technology but even they (as far as I know) haven't removed the classic add-in from Essbase. If IBM are grabbing on to Oracle's coat tails then may be they should pay attention to this?

[John Hammond]

Hi Sandar

Did you get any luck with resolving the Tm1camclient Passport starting error?

We had an old 9.5 perspectives client that worked fine with Excel 2010 and gives this message now we have upgraded to 2013.

Have tried pretty much everthing suggested by IBM and have just got IT to drop DEP (data execution prevention) to a lower level, but to no avail.

When it goes to the server to retrieve the URL to authenticate through CAM it is not retrieving anything as a blank line is showing under CognisGatewayURI in tm1p.ini. (Normally this will be filled with the URL provided in Tm1s.cfg). (Also putting this in tm1p.ini does not help as it appears this string is held for reference only)

Any assistance from anyone who has resolved this would be much appreciated.

[tomok]

We had an old 9.5 perspectives client that worked fine with Excel 2010 and gives this message now we have upgraded to 2013.

Version 9.5? Isn't that about 10+ years old now? That's longer than a human lifetime in software years. I wish you luck. Just glad I am not being asked to fix this.

[lotsaram]

Why given it’s nearly 2020 would you be upgrading Excel to Office 2013 when Office 2013 is itself already obsolete?

[jim wood]

We had an old 9.5 perspectives client that worked fine with Excel 2010 and gives this message now we have upgraded to 2013.

Version 9.5? Isn't that about 10+ years old now? That's longer than a human lifetime in software years. I wish you luck. Just glad I am not being asked to fix this.

May be they've kept the tool and not paid for support. You can only install what you've got. Just a guess.

[jim wood]

Why given it’s nearly 2020 would you be upgrading Excel to Office 2013 when Office 2013 is itself already obsolete?

I've still got 2013 installed on one of my machines at home as I like the ribbon.