TM1 Workflow or TM1 Applications

[ViRa]

Hi,

I need to create an approval hierarchy workflow in TM1 10.1.1. Can anybody please tell me should I use TM1 Workflow or TM1 Applications to achieve this?
Also, it will be helpful if I can know the limitations of both.

Thanks.

[Harvey]

You're going to need to do some research with regard to your specific needs, but from my understanding Workflow is no longer a product supported or recommended by IBM.

That aside, my own experience with Workflow is that it's quite limited and unstable, so I wouldn't recommend it personally.

Applications is much better, although it has quirks of it's own, so make sure you read up fully to ensure it meets your requirements before committing.

If not, it's possible to write a custom application in the platform of your choice, but it will be a lot of work. I have done this once in the past, but only got it to prototype stage before the project was put on hold without being resumed for political reasons.

[LanceTylor]

Here a couple things to consider when designing Tm1 Applications.

1. The approval hierarchy dimension cannot contain multiple hierarchies

2. The approval hierarchy dimension can only be used in one application. I had a couple of copies of the approval hierarchy dimension (Org Structure) in order to use the same structure in multiple applications (Revenue Model, Payroll Model, Expenses). I would give this one careful consideration.

3. Security of the approval hierarchy dimension is managed through the applications web portal (Managing Rights). It might be worthwhile creating some custom TI's to handle this as oppose to manual process that exists (This is something I am looking at right now)

4. With version 10.1.1 you can now incorporate TM1 WebSheets.

Regards
Lance

[Tm1andTm1]

Hi,
Workflow is traditional application of TM1 which cannot be compared with Contributor application. I highly recommend you to go for workflow rather than contributor.

[qml]

I highly recommend you to go for workflow rather than contributor.

No. TM1 Applications (formerly TM1 Contributor) is a far better choice, not to mention that you cannnot get Workflow anymore, as Lazarus has already stated.

Another option is to build your own workflow control directly using TM1 objects (cubes, dimensions, processes). You can then make it really bespoke and adjusted to your specific needs, but it obviously requires some expertise and creativity.

[declanr]

Workflow as mentioned by Lazarus has pretty much become an "archived" piece of kit if you will, it can still be used but won't probably have guaranteed compatibility with future version... it also doesn't really add much in my opinion.

Applications/Contributor - Great in concept but with the version 10 incarnation still being relatively new to the world, my personal testing has found it to not perform quite as well as I would like in a number of areas - as Lazarus stated "It has quirks".
I honestly think that maybe in a couple of versions time it could be a very good tool (and I truly hope it will be) but for the time being I do not feel it to be good enough for me to recommend that any of my customers use it.



I will offer you a third option that is simply creating your own workflow processes.
You can built hierarchy cubes to show approval status moving up a hierarchy, use TIs (possibly embedded in websheets) to move an input along the submission and approval stages. Even use a tool like Blat to send emails to the people responsible accordingly.
This is the standard approach I go with, it gives you a much greater scope for flexibility to make the system meet YOUR NEEDS rather than you having to shoehorn something in to a prebuilt process. And although it may take a little extra planning, you will find that when you get into it - it is pretty simple to do and won't add that much time to the project (if well designed you can make it far easier to maintain than some of the contributor applications.)

An extra hint is that if you use wingdings and conditional formatting in a websheet you can make some pretty attractive looking RAG (red, amber, green) approval monitoring screens.


EDIT - QML beat me to it but I'd written this out so you're having it anyway.

[Tm1andTm1]

As LanceTylor stated the limitations of contributor, Yes you need expertise on developing workflow where you can use all excel functions which makes your web sheet presentable with extra features(Not present in Contributor).

[Tm1andTm1]

Hi Declan,
Can you please explain the third option you mentioned here, I always use workflow application, it gives me the flexibility to use formatting and many other Excel functions in reports and other Planning application. It makes presentation more attractive and user friendly, although user are happy to work in excel, From the last many years they are comfortable working with Excel and I always wanted to give the interface which is more familiar to them rather than imposing Contributor.

[declanr]

I'm a bit too busy to write a detailed response at the moment but maybe another forumer will kindly step in.

The basics are surrounding the basis that you can build it to do whatever you need for your workflow, as standard you would build a cube which entails the areas for submission and allows you to track how far along the process it is. You populate this with data from TI processes initiated by the users that would also update security through the security control cubes (if you download something like sendemail.exe you can send emails at this point as well.)

There are a number of different ways to go about the detailed design part though and I would say that most of the workflows i've built have been different in design based on the level of granularity, levels of hierarchy etc that the customer wanted.

[ViRa]

Thanks all for your reply. It has really helped me. I'm going ahead with Workflow as the Excel interface would be comfortable for the users working on Excel already rather than switching over to a new interface.

[jim wood]

The right choice, as long as you are happy having an unsupported production environment. As others have stated workflow is an old product that only works with older versions of TM1. These older versions are not going to be supported forever. You will end up facing the choice of removing IBM support or upgrading and loosing workflow. If you go with Applications at least you'll be keeping in line with support. Saying that, as others have stated if you build your own your will gaurantee support for the life of TM1 as it will be model based rather than product based.

[Tm1andTm1]

We heard that IBM is planning to remove Architect from TM1, all the development part will be done on Performance Modeler.
Should we start working on Performance Modeler? what is your opinion ?

[Harvey]

I don't know where you heard that, but Performance Modeller would need to have a LOT more features before it could be used as the only development environment for TM1. I doubt it'll ever happen, even if IBM are trying to do it.

Workflow, on the other hand, has been unsupported for several years and was never a particularly stable product in any version I tried. You will be taking your life in your hands trying to implement it, IMHO.

[jim wood]

Lets be clear, Architect is a stand alone version of server explorer. If they say they will be removing Architect, they be removing the stand alone version. This has been muted before. I would be more concerned if you heard prespectives was going away.

[Tm1andTm1]

Hi Harvey,

Can please list down the problems you faced while working on TM1 workflow. I would be very helpful for me to deal with, if any thing comes up you already faced.

[Tm1andTm1]

Hi Jim,
It may be a rumour which I have heard, as per the development done on the TM1 adding PM and promoting it like (in TM1 10.2 there is added feature where on single click the EP model is converted in TM1, it converts the structure like cube, dimension links and rule).
I seems IBM is trying to eliminate the features of TM1 and promoting EP on the same time, No wonder, some day can hear that the name of TM1 has changed now it is Cognos EP...

[Harvey]

Can please list down the problems you faced while working on TM1 workflow. I would be very helpful for me to deal with, if any thing comes up you already faced.

Sure, although I investigated it several years ago, so my memory is somewhat vague. Workflow may well have been updated in the meantime, so if others have more recent experiences, I would listen to them first.

Having said, that I investigated it for several days and ended up concluding that the add-in was not stable enough to be given to the users. I found it crashed frequently and would bring down all of Excel with it. It was also very slow when the TM1 server was hosted off-site.

At one point, I managed to get it into an unworkable state and had to restore my TM1 server from a backup and reinstall Workflow.

My logic for excluding it from the project was not so much that it was impossible to resolve the issues I found, but rather that I had limited time to implement the Workflow component (I believe it was 2 or 3 weeks) and wouldn't have time to switch to a custom solution if Workflow proved unworkable.

If you have a more generous time frame, you may have time to resolve any issues you find, but in my case, it wasn't worth the risk.

PS: Jim, thanks for the clarification, but I hope IBM doesn't discontinue Architect. It doesn't cost them any maintenance (since it shares the same code base as Perspectives), and is a much more stable way to perform TM1 modelling.

[David Usherwood]

I recall that the original TM1 Workflow, though pretty, didn't actually lock submissions unless you wrote your own code. At least TM1 Applications Web (formerly Contributor) does.

[Tm1andTm1]

David can you please explain what do you mean by lock submissions??

[David Usherwood]

Errrr.........
When you submit a plan for review and approval, you don't want the submitter to muck around with it - do you?