TM1 Forum

Hi All,

I am continuing the review of Tm1 9.4mr1 + fp3 features prior to use it in Production....

I created a drill through process between two cubes ( reporting back to staging cube).

Using the 9.4 client ( updated to HotFix 7)
- From the cube viewer or Tm1 web
it just behave as expected, drilling to the area defined through the drill process based on the perimeter defined in the drill rule.

From An Active from and/or a Slice,
It creates a drill report displaying the relevant area but it displays zero no matter what area i drill onto.
If i go in individual cells of the drill report and validate the formula ( click in the excel formula bar and press enter) the correct values then get displayed....
Not very handy...

I also notice that drilling from a slice create an active form instead of another slice but that minor compair to the data display issue

I am about to log a support request to IBM about it.


Did someone ( Michel ) came accross this issue while using 9.4 ?



Side Note :
Using the 9.1SP3 client (against 9.4 server...) :
Drill from views, slice and even dynamic slices works perfectly...

Olivier - why on earth would you migrate from 9.1 SP3 to 9.4 MR1? You would be much better off going to 9.5.1 or even 9.5.2

Lotsaram,

Funny your question is the same as the IBM support
( But i hope there would have an option for me in terms of hotfix or other alternative...).

I cannot go to 9.5 due to budget limitation...
IBM let us migrate to 9.4 while keeping our licencing schema ( not named licences...).

Difficult to show a ROI on this budget at the moment as the local Tm1 application has degenarated into a un manageable monstruosity...
The business sees it as an overhead today not adding much value and is not recognising it s ownership over the application.

Hopefully, restructurations and other constraints have pushed the business into the redefinition of their reporting requirements.

Using this opportunity,
I have rebuild the core P&L reporting module and budgeting module which i hope will re establish the application credibility and steer back ownership to business (finance).
The main game i sto highlight the added value of tm1 against VBA excel templates and access databases that have been created as parralel chanel of information
tm1 9.1 would be good enough for that step ( 8.4 could even do that ).

I never would have expected that you could go from excel hell to olap heaven and back to excel hell...

So why 9.4,
A year ago senior management have pushed IT to start to build a dashboard portal
as nobody dared to try to tame the Tm1 monster...IT have answered by implementing Cognos 8.
During the discussions with IBM regarding Cognos 8 purchase,
Tm1 upgrade have been discussed as the bridging C8/TM1 is only possible from 9.4 onward (Web portlets...)...

At this stage my reporting module rewamp is 90% completed and about to go live / parralel run production in the coming weeks...
(1.5 year dev iterations for a P&L reporting module to give you an idea of the inertia around here, this is not Rapid nor Agile this is waterfall "niagara" type)

I want to take the opportunity to try to push the upgrade to 9.4 and unleash some maintenance free drill downs, active forms and other basic dynamic reporting capabilities...
That should drive towards the definion of an assumption based budgeting process an enhance the business capabilities and efficiency in terms of planning and analysis...

Once all of this is rebuild and understood/owned by the business, Tm1 should have retake his place as the planing and analysis core tool for the organisation

From there asking extra budget to finance management to go to 9.5.2 should be a piece of cake

Meanwhile i was hoping i could demonstrate a drill though without a bug
So all you have to do to see your transactions is right click drill and ho...
it shows zeroes but there are actually data if you click in the excel formula and revalidate...
or if you spend a couple of hundred thousands we would have a more stable version...
A business analyst at the back raise his hand "but when i drill this from my pivot table connected to my home made access data base cooking data from an sql view it drill just fine"
we should maybe keep my hand crafted access database that only i understand ? It does not cost anything...
...
...

FYI,
IBM has provided 2 Hot Fixes ( HF16 for 9.4.1 FP3 64bit server and web).

I will give that a go to see if that fix this issue and post the results...

Yes it did the trick

I can now drill through from active from toward a second active form in my staging cube and explore the transactions in detail with values in front...