TM1 Perspective Vs Pax

[kavitha2002]

Hello,

I am running the excel which has some worksheet function to pull data from TM1 and generate the report. I am performing this via vb.net code,excel sheets are protected with password, the problem is tm1 perspective working fine without prompting password, but for tm1 pax login is prompted for excel sheets.

Any idea. Why??

[Paul Segal]

This is a bug. IBM said it had been fixed in PAX 11.0.33, but it's still there in 11.0.38. I've just (re)raised the defect with IBM.

[Paul Segal]

So an update from support/development:

Excel prevents the dropdown from rendering on a protected sheet. This has been the behavior for past releases as well except before the fix for Defect 80174 (it is PI96773), it would prompt on selection. Once a password has been entered, the dropdowns will start rendering again. For an unlocked cell, you can edit the SUBNM formula directly or do it through the set editor after entering the unlock password. One caveat is that if the sheet is protected with no password then the dropdowns will render without a problem. This is because our protection preserver has a case where it tries to unlock with String.Empty. which succeeds when no password is set. Below are some cases to define these new behaviors.

Protected with Password
1.) Unlocked cell on protected sheet- No drop down shows, opening the set editor is allowed after entering password, and editing the formula is allowed.
2.) Unlocked cell after entering password- drop down shows, no need to enter password again through set editor, editing formula is allowed.
3.) Locked cell- No drop down shows, can't edit formula, can't open set editor.
4.) Locked cell after entering password- no dropdown shows, set editor can be opened but changes are not applied on apply and close (no message), cannot change formulas. Sheet must be unprotected through the Review tab first.

Protected without a Password
1.) Unlocked cell on protected sheet- Drop down shows, opening the set editor is allowed, and editing the formula is allowed.
2.) Locked cell- no dropdown shows, set editor can be opened but changes are not applied on apply and close (no message), cannot change formulas

I struggle to understand the logic here. If I have a protected sheet with an unprotected cell then by design I want the user to be able to access the unprotected cell, including using the set editor and dropdown if it contains a SUBNM formula. Why would I want them to put a password in if I've explicitly unprotected the cell? Am I missing something?

[Paul Segal]

So, apparently this is expected behavior and there's no plan to change it. I'd rather have the Perspectives behavior and no drop-down myself. I'm going to raise an RFE. *sigh*

[Steve Rowe]

Hi Paul,

Feel your pain on this one, behaviour on a unlocked cell irrespective of a password being set should be the same, i.e. "everything" works, can't see any justification for it being otherwise.

Arbitrary flipping of defects into RFE is pretty rage inducing.....it would be interesting to know what the internal policy is wrt to this process. We would then have something to base our arguments on.

One thing I have learnt when raising an issue is to never propose a solution as it appears to be short road to an RFE.

If it was me I would reopen the case and fight my corner.

[kavitha2002]

Hello @Paul,

Thanks for detailed info.

[Mark RMBC]

Hi,

I have a few questions re PAX and Perspectives:

Does anyone know if IBM planning to ditch/not support perspectives in the near future?

Are the following still relevant in PAX?:

"Dynamic Reports are supported in Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel, except for cell and password protection"
Does this mean if you protect a worksheet and then deselect locked they will still be protected?

"User defined consolidations are not available. This includes the usage of DBRW worksheet functions that use subset names as a dimension element reference"
This seems quite a limitation? Am I missing something?

"The Undo capability to revert data entry changes is currently not implemented in Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel"

Do the above apply to the web?

cheers, Mark

[tomok]

Does anyone know if IBM planning to ditch/not support perspectives in the near future?

Your guess is as good as mine but let me point out that Perspectives is based on the legacy API and PAX is based on the REST API/MDX, AKA, the future direction. How long do you think they will continue to support a dying API?

"User defined consolidations are not available. This includes the usage of DBRW worksheet functions that use subset names as a dimension element reference"
This seems quite a limitation? Am I missing something?

User-defined consolidations requires the legacy API, which PAX does not use. So does the using a subset name in a DBRW. I don't see those ever coming back.

[jim wood]

Does anyone know if IBM planning to ditch/not support perspectives in the near future?

I've heard many different rumors / pointers on this one. I would say however I believe that their long term goal is to get rid of perspectives. They tried with Performance Modeler but we all know how well that went? The way they are going with Cafe would give you every indication. If they added a rules editor and a TI editor to cafe, why would you need perspectives? The only question for me is when,

Jim.

[David Usherwood]

From what I can see the aim is for PAW to take on the developer admin tasks and PAX to be purely Excel reporting and budgeting. Even on these there is a way to go since PAX does not support the new named hierarchies in Dynamic (or Static) Reports so the best way to generate decent interactive reporting is still not ready for the new features

[lotsaram]

Rule & TI editor is not coming to PAX. The home of all developer & administrator functionality will be in PAW.

"The Undo capability to revert data entry changes is currently not implemented in Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel"

Do the above apply to the web?

PAX (as Perspectives) is just the authoring tool for TM1 Websheets. Once the sheet is being consumed in TM1Web the (current) restrictions of PAX regarding cell commentary, spreading and data undo don't apply.

Regarding user defined consolidations: my personal opinion is "no big loss". I should qualify that as it is a very useful and essential feature for many users. But I have never been a fan of how it was implemented with subset within subset and subsets as pseudo-elements. Now that alternate hierarchies are available there's a much better way to implement. (But maybe IBM will do something different). No matter, providing that they do actually provide a different (and better) alternative to the current UDC implementation that's fine by me.