9.5 - TM1 Contributor - Approval Heirarchy

[Martin Ingram]

Have installed 9.5 on our test server including "TM1 Contributor"; There were a couple of additional steps for Contributor which needed to be performed manually, but the installation guide's quite clear and the deployment process via Apache Tomcat was pretty easy.

First sticking point I've come across is that in order to create an approval heirarchy, you need to specify a TM1 subset which is "a representation of the approval/reporting structure of your business". The notes state the following with respect to subset suitability;

"The subset for your approval heirarchy must contain a single top level element. If you attempt to use a subset that contains multiple top level elements as an approval heirarchy you will recieve an error".

The obvious way for this to work for us is using our "Entity" dimension which is the main driver for the group's reporting structure. We do have alternatve heirarchies in that dimension as one is used for statutory reporting, another for joint venture related reports, and another for management accounts - these heirarchies do all roll up into separate, top level elements.

When i try to use a subset of that dimension (that only contains one heirarchy, rolling up into a single top level element), I am getting an error that says "The heirarchy has more than one top level member".

So - question is are the notes wrong and you may only use a dimension that contains a single top level member (meaning that we'd potentially need to perform some systems redesign to fit around contributor), or do we have a bug which means that it just isn't interpreting the subset correctly?

Thought I'd post this for anyone with previous experience of cognos contributor before going into battle with the IBM support website!!

[paulsimon]

Martin

Personally I always ensure that dimensions join up to a single top level element, largely because of past experience with many OLEDB for OLAP tools which require this, but also because it gives the user a single point to drill down from, and this makes it easier for them to access the different hierarchies.

I would set up something like

All Entities
All Entities Managerial 1
All Entities Regulatory 0

The 0 weight on the All Entities Regulatory stops double counting.

If you have a hierarchy that does not include all the elements in the dimension, then I generally create a zAlt-Hier hierarchy, which rolls up to the All level with a 0 weight, and I can then create multiple sub-hierarchies below this.

I think if you do this you may get Contributor to work, with a pretty minimal change to your existing dimension, but at present I haven't had the time to download 9.5.

Regards


Paul Simon

[Martin Ingram]

That's a very simple suggestion that I really should have thought of myself! Only fly in the ointment may be;

"All members in the subset used for your approval heirarchy must have only a single immediate parent"

Which may also preclude alternative heirarchies - will give it a go though........

[Martin Ingram]

Tried that now, but same error as before;

"The heirarchy has more than one top level member"

Think I'm going to abort this testing for now - my account manager's been in touch and apparently we're not licensed for this due to being on 'legacy' contract