Another Feeder Assistance Request

[MikeF]

Hi,

I'm struggling to work out how to feed our Project cube based on this rule:

Code: Select all

['Forecast', 'D001','Project in Construction']=N:
IF (  ELLEV('Project',!Project) = 0 & ELISANC('CCL Project','Sys.Level 2 Projects',!Project) = 0 ,
    IF(
        NUMBR(!FinYear | ATTRS('Period',!Period,'Month No')) >=
        DB('Project Timing',!Version,'Construction',SUBST(!Project,1,5),'Start Month No')&
        NUMBR(!FinYear | ATTRS('Period',!Period,'Month No')) <=
        DB('Project Timing',!Version,'Construction,SUBST(!Project,1,5),'End Month No'),
    1,0),
CONTINUE);

The Project Timing cube that is the source for the calculation of whether the project is in construction was set up with these dimensions: Version, timing profile, project, timing measure. Currently this cube has no skipcheck or feeder section in its rules.

The Project cube (where the rule sits) has these dimensions: Version, FinYear, Period, Project, WorkCenter, ProjectMeasure.

The rule works fine and gives the right results, but consolidations aren't showing the totals as they're all reporting that there's no feeding going on. And I have no idea where to start trying to feed this beast!

Any assistance greatly appreciated!

[RJ!]

The rule works fine and gives the right results, but consolidations aren't showing the totals

How have you set up your consolidations in the .cfg file?

Have you tried to drop the "N" from the rule?

[BariAbdul]

How have you set up your consolidations in the .cfg file?

Do you mean setting up this parameter in .cfg:
AllowSeparateNandCRules=T

[lotsaram]

Hi Mike,

Rules need to be fed from DATA. No one is going to be able to help you unless you provide more information on the makeup of the dimensions in the cube and with respect to the measure dimension, where the input data is.

In a general sense though whether a project is active or not is dependent only on the project dimension itself and time (2 dimensions in this case). Work center is not relevant, so you need to be careful to calculate (and feed) only under a default work center or else you risk double-counting. I assume that D001 is the default work center and this is what you are trying to do, but it's only a guess as you haven't give all the information needed to actually help.

[tomok]

It looks like you are populating a flag called "Project in Construction" with a value of 1 whenever the project starting and ending months are between a month range inside the Finyear dimension. Here's the problem. Like lotsaram stated, the feeding has to come from data. In your case the only data available to feed this flag would be the Project Timing cube and would require a very tricky conditional feeder. I can't give you an example because there isn't enough info. However, I would recommend skipping the rule and populating the feeder with a TI process.

P.S. I'm not saying this because I don't think you can write the rule. Even if I were building the model myself I would use a TI to populate the flag.

[MikeF]

Hi Tomok, Lotsaram (and others)

It looks like you are populating a flag called "Project in Construction" with a value of 1 whenever the project starting and ending months are between a month range inside the Finyear dimension.

This pretty much perfectly explains what I'm doing. The Timing cube stores the start and end periods as strings for each header project.

timing.JPG (31.66 KiB) Viewed 5068 times

The flag in the Project cube gets set fine by the rule, but the natural consolidations show no values as they're not fed, as you can see in the screengrab.

consol.JPG (75.22 KiB) Viewed 5068 times

In a general sense though whether a project is active or not is dependent only on the project dimension itself and time (2 dimensions in this case). Work center is not relevant, so you need to be careful to calculate (and feed) only under a default work center or else you risk double-counting. I assume that D001 is the default work center and this is what you are trying to do

Yes, I've picked the D001 workcentre as the single target for the rule just for that reason - so the flag is only set in one WC.

Here's the problem. Like lotsaram stated, the feeding has to come from data. In your case the only data available to feed this flag would be the Project Timing cube and would require a very tricky conditional feeder. I can't give you an example because there isn't enough info. However, I would recommend skipping the rule and populating the feeder with a TI process.

I suspected it wasn't ever going to be easy. Do you mean populate the C level consolidated figure from a TI, or somehow populating the feeder directly from the TI? That's a new concept to me.

[tomok]

Do you mean populate the C level consolidated figure from a TI, or somehow populating the feeder directly from the TI?

Neither. Populate the "Project in Construction" element using TI. It should be easy enough. That value doesn't really need to be dynamic does it? How often will it change? Once a month, or whenever a new project is added? That doesn't qualify, at least in my opinion, for something that needs to be dynamic. Whenever I build a model I save rules for items that really need to be dynamic. Don't overly complicate your models.