TM1 Forum

Hi

I would like see if anyone has been able to create/open a "hyperlink" to a folder in a specific directory on the TM1 Server via a TM1 Websheet.

We have a menu page that consists of actions buttons to run the extracts via TI Processes. The extracts create a txt file in this specific directory. Each time a user runs an extract (TI Process), it is given a unique file name, hence the need to only open to the folder.

I have tried via the Excel insert hyperlink button as well as the Excel hyperlink function =HYPERLINK using the UNC path. These links work fine from Xcelerator, but when I upload the menu page to the apps folder, it seems it doesn't even recognise that there is a hyperlink behind the name. If I change the hyperlink to a http://, it works fine.

One thing I have thought that might be stopping this is permissions/security to the data extract folder.

Can anyone help me please?

Many thanks!
Terri

You can't use excel buttons as VBA is not supported in TM1 Web. Add the link in to a cell instead.

Hi Terri

As TM1WEb is a Web Application, you need to specify the hyperlink in terms of http as I think you have already found. So it needs to be http://NameOfYourWebServer/PathToFile

Regards

Paul Simon

tez wrote:I would like see if anyone has been able to create/open a "hyperlink" to a folder

Hyperlinks typically link to files, not folders, so I am taking a guess that's what you really mean If you meant that you'd like the hyperlink to open a windows explorer window showing all the text files then that isn't going to work as you imagine.

tez wrote:We have a menu page that consists of actions buttons to run the extracts via TI Processes. The extracts create a txt file in this specific directory. Each time a user runs an extract (TI Process), it is given a unique file name, hence the need to only open to the folder.

If you output the files to the externals folder within the TM1 instance data directory then there are documented methods of linking to these via HYPERLINK functions in TM1 Web. This is described in the online doco (for 9.4.1 but should work for 9.5.x too).

tez wrote:but when I upload the menu page to the apps folder, it seems it doesn't even recognise that there is a hyperlink behind the name. If I change the hyperlink to a http://, it works fine.

So maybe you got it all working? Remember that if you saved the 'application' as report.xls then it is report.xls_20120202000000.xls (YYYYMMDDHHMMSS timestamp) in the }Externals folder.

HTH
Robin

Hi

Thankyou all for posting a reply.

Unfortunately it is the folder we are trying to open through the link, not an actually file as the file name will change each time a TI process data export is generated.

So, looks like we will have to rethink what we are going to do.

Regards
Terri

tez wrote:Unfortunately it is the folder we are trying to open through the link, not an actually file as the file name will change each time a TI process data export is generated.

So, it looks like you want the user to be able to somehow receive the file that they've just generated via running the process from the Action button? You could have the TI that generates the file, not only save it to a shared folder, but also e-mail it to the user who clicked the button (you know that information from TM1User() function). This thread has some options for you to think about if you wanted to offer that functionality.

Thanks Robin....the emailing of the file to the user is certainly an option we can consider.

Regards
Terri

If you step back and take your TM1 blinders off it's very clear why you can't open a folder with the =HYPERLINK function. Whenever you have a hyperlink on a web site, or via a shortcut on your desktop, there is something going on behind the scenes when you click on that link. When you click on a web site folder, for example, your browser is taking that link and "browsing" the link. If it is a folder, and the web site has directory browsing enabled, you get a list of the files. When you click on a folder link on your desktop, Windows Explorer is taking over and browsing the folder to display the list of files available. IOW, you are not browsing the folder, either Internet or Windows Explorere is, it just launches for you automatically via the file associations.

Coming back to the =HYPERLINK function, Excel is the tool that is doing the work, not IE, or Windows Explorer, so no browsing is available and it looks like the TM1 interpretation of that function is to not have any browsing either. If you were using Perspectives, you could write a VBA function to call the File, Open dialog box when you click on a folder link but macros don't work in TM1 Web.

tomok wrote:If you step back and take your TM1 blinders off

It's true that the web experience TM1 Web delivers is not quite the same as peoples experience of different things they can do in their browser. TM1 Web (out of the box) doesn't really provide a lot of things that people expect such as date pickers, form validation, rich text editors and pertinently, upload and download functionality. However, I do think it is reasonable that people expect this sort of stuff and it probably wouldn't be the largest mountain to climb to implement it... there's a suspicion that the original acquisition of Applix by Cognos meant that the focus for web client development was shifted from TM1 Web to the Cognos stack and it has been that way ever since...

tomok wrote:you could write a VBA function to call the File, Open dialog box when you click on a folder link but macros don't work in TM1 Web.

It is possible to write server-side script to output the available text files to a .csv, then read that into a dimension and base the hyperlink formulas off UNC paths to those files that are stored as attributes; and then present this as an active form - all from one action button click... for example... There are always ways to program around the lack of functionality you want with the obvious downside being the responsibility to maintain a lot of custom development.

tez wrote:So, looks like we will have to rethink what we are going to do.

Have you thought about allowing the users access to the cube views which have the same content as the .csv output files? Then they could browse to those views and if they wanted the output in Excel, they could use the in-built slice/ snapshot functionality? This is one option that wouldn't require any custom development or overhead maintenance - just amending your TIs to output to cube instead of output to file.