Excel 2013 Compatability, TM1 10.2 vs CX 10.2.1

[RSK]

On the compatibility check for the latest versions TM1 and and CX there is a mismatch relating to MS Office compatibility. TM1 is compatible with 2013 however CX is not.

My first thoughts on this is this is a bit strange but thinking about it I wonder if the lack of 2013 availability in CX relates to the other non TM1 modules...? Has anyone tested perspectives (Xcelerator) with Excel 2013 in the latest version of CX, does it work?

I've raised this with IBM, I got a "That's strange" response from them, they are going to get some explanation from Cognos Express Product
Management.

[RSK]

Initial response from IBM has basically said 2013 isn't on the supported environment list because they haven't tested it with Cognos Express yet!

Support are requesting this is done and fed back as part of the PMR, unfortunately there is no ETA given by them. One thing the support team member said was he'd be surprised if it didn't work (as TM1 enterprise is supported) but it obviously won't be supported by IBM is problems occurred going forward.

Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence!

[lotsaram]

My casual observation is that although Excel 2013 worked with 10.1 the initial load time of the add-in was very slow (sometimes minutes before you could do anything) and it was a bit unstable. 10.2 seems to have fixed all that and it is much more responsive and stable with Excel 2013. Both TM1 10.2 and CX.

[RSK]

My casual observation is that although Excel 2013 worked with 10.1 the initial load time of the add-in was very slow (sometimes minutes before you could do anything) and it was a bit unstable. 10.2 seems to have fixed all that and it is much more responsive and stable with Excel 2013. Both TM1 10.2 and CX.

Thanks for this. We have a Customer wanting to go to CX 10.2.1 and the lack of Excel 2013 "Support" was putting them off. Your experience here is very assuring.

[overflow]

Thanks also for the feedback; following this up on the other end - a client who needs to move to Office 2013, and is being stalled by the lack of support of CX for the Office 2013 environment.

[overflow]

Further to the previous - All other aspects of the Express install seem to work fine, but installation of the Xcelerator client failed. It seems that the install files for Cognos Express do not seem to recognise Excel 2013; the error message indicates as:
INS-ERR-0075 The following prerequisites are missing. Please cancel this installation at the first opportunity and install them. "32-bit editions of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or above"


Does anyone have any knowledge of when this will be corrected, or if there is a workaround?


This was using Excel in Microsoft Office Standard 2013 edition 32-bit(15.0.4535.1507) and Express 10.2.1

[declanr]

Yeah I noticed that when installing it on a demo laptop with excel 2013... from a production perspective though it doesn't bother me as until the issues with the web are fixed I wouldn't recommend it anyway.

Be interesting to hear the IBM view of when excel 2013 will be supported but considering CX is the budget version we should be happy at how close it is to enterprise TM1 for a change... could be a damn sight worse than just a version of excel not being supported!

And on a side note would be be interesting to see if you could install it with Excel 2010 and then upgrade the Excel package and see if it works.... would be a lot of effort to do on everyones PCs but just intriguing to see what would happen.

[overflow]

Thanks Declan

You mentioned issues with the web. Could you expand on that a little, given that CX will obligate Planner or TM1 Web to deploy in an Office 2013 environment?

Interesting idea about upgrading Excel after deployment! Will see if I can get that to work! May not be this week though.

While from a development stance I can use Architect and Planner or TM1 web to build and deploy applications, users love their interaction via Excel, and where a client has a specific reason to want functionality available in Excel 2013, I will have to explain that they have two options:

1 - Wait until CX is released with Office 2013 support (unknown time frame)
2 - Upgrade to Enterprise. Given the cost impact, that is not going to be a viable solution.

I know RSK was looking into information about the future development of CX and the pathway and I would be really interested if anyone hears anything about the timeline for CX supporting the Excel 2013...

Overflow

[dwood09]

Hi All, I'm also getting the INS-ERR-0075 with CX10.2.1 and Excel 2013 32bit. Any tips on interoperability would be awesome.

lotsaram - how'd you get 10.2 to work with Excel 2013?

good luck all - I think we're going to need it!!

[lotsaram]

The install I did had excel 2010 also on the machine so that's probably the reason.

[RSK]

Thanks Declan

You mentioned issues with the web. Could you expand on that a little, given that CX will obligate Planner or TM1 Web to deploy in an Office 2013 environment?

Interesting idea about upgrading Excel after deployment! Will see if I can get that to work! May not be this week though.

While from a development stance I can use Architect and Planner or TM1 web to build and deploy applications, users love their interaction via Excel, and where a client has a specific reason to want functionality available in Excel 2013, I will have to explain that they have two options:

1 - Wait until CX is released with Office 2013 support (unknown time frame)
2 - Upgrade to Enterprise. Given the cost impact, that is not going to be a viable solution.

I know RSK was looking into information about the future development of CX and the pathway and I would be really interested if anyone hears anything about the timeline for CX supporting the Excel 2013...

Overflow

I'm still awaiting an official response from IBM on this. They were blaming the IOD conference for lack comments to date. I'll follow this up again tomorrow.

[declanr]

Just an extra follow up to this since I got lumbered with hooking CX 10.2 up to Excel 2013 today.

I installed the server software on a 2008 box with no excel instance and then installed Perspectives on my laptop which has excel 2010 from the CX manager url and all was working ok.

Then I just copied the whole C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\Cognos Express Clients\Xcelerator Client folder across to PC's that only has Excel 2013, manually pointed it to the excel add-in and job done.

Obviously Lotsa's method of installing it on a pc with 2010 & 2013 will do the trick as well but this gets you there if you have no option to start with 2010 on the machine as well.

Haven't fully tested compatibility yet but it connects up perfectly well and working on the basis that it appears to just be using the same client as full fat TM1; which does support 2013 it should all be fine... ignoring all the bugs of using the latest version of CX which doesn't have a fixpack yet.

Anyone else looking to do this of course I would still point out that if you ever need to go to IBM for support they will probably just say "2013 isn't supported so we won't help you until you set it up with the software we recommend"... and in most instances I would avoid the newest versions of software like the plague until at least a couple of fixpacks are out. But if Excel 2013 is the only option then 10.1 is just too slow, hopefully when FP1 is released for CX 10.2 it will include support from Excel 2013.

[overflow]

Hi Declan,

I have followed a similar process, copying the Xcelerator Client folder from an older version of Express, and then pointing the add-in at it.

My issue is now that the icons display but there are no descriptions, and the TM1 icon at the top is not displaying, but can be selected. I seem to recall a thread about that, but cannot find it easily.

However, functionally it seems to work well.

Overflow.

[davidh]

CX Xcelerator 10.2.1.1 with Interim Fix 2 now enables client to be installed with Office 2013. Tried it on a brand new Surface Pro 3 and seems to work fine.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.w ... wg21678220