Model Artifacts Browser

Overview

The Model Artifacts Browser is a dynamic viewer window where you can see all of the artifacts associated with a model in one place. It is easy to click between different artifacts to quickly open and view them, or to compare to the artifacts associated with other models.

Opening the Model Artifacts Browser

To open the Model Artifacts Browser, do one of the following:

• Select Model Artifacts from the More menu, or
• Click on a Map, Calculation, Formula, or Scope artifact inside a Model box

When you click on an artifact, the last 5 items used are shown in a list box. Click one to open it, or click More... to see all artifacts of that type.

The Model Artifacts Browser has the same look and feel whether the model is Generated and Unlocked, Generated and Locked, or Ungenerated. However, some operations, like a calculation, cannot be performed on a Locked or Ungenerated model.

The left side of the Model Artifacts Browser has the list of artifacts. The right side contains details of the artifact selected.

Icons are available to perform actions on the artifact, such as Refresh, Filter, Breakback, Variable Manager and Run.

You can click on a column title to sort the list of artifacts by that column.

Ways to View Model Artifacts

Model Artifacts are available for Power and Contributor users. Reviewer users can see only Views (Analyze) and Reports.

You can view a model's artifacts several different ways.

From the Grid layout, inside a Model box:

From the List layout:

From the More menu, click to open the Model Artifacts Browser:

Dynamic Planning: Variable Management

The Variable Management screen allows you to view and update multiple variables across multiple models. In the variable management screen, you can view and update Variables. In the Variable Management Landing screen, which is also the view screen, you can view all the variables defined in the application across different artifacts. You can navigate to specific artifacts by using the hyperlinks. You can view and update variables based on model and calculation combination in the update variable screen. You can update variables for one or more models on one or more calculations at a time.
You can either update each variable by adding the new value or perform a Bulk Variable update across one model for multiple calculations. You will have the ability to choose dimension member/substitution variables. The variable list will be generated based on the model and calculations selected. You can select a new value for the selected variable from the drop-down list. You cannot perform bulk operations on a variable that does not have any value assigned to it.
Variable Management screens would be accessible to all the power users,and contributors can view or update the variables from only those models that they can access.

In Practice: To view variables in the Variable Management Screen

1. Open SpotlightXL, go to your profile, and click Manage Your Account.
2. Select Subtask and scroll down to select Model Administration.
3. Select Variable Management in the Model Administration drop-down list.
4. In the Variable Management screen, the default value for the Action drop-down list is View. You can view all the variables on this screen.

In Practice: To update variables in the Variable Management Screen

1. Open SpotlightXL, go to your profile, and click Manage Your Account.
2. Select Subtask and scroll down to select Model Administration.
3. Select Variable Management in the Model Administration drop-down list.
4. Select a Model from the drop-down list.
5. Select a Calculation from the drop-down list.
6. Select a New value from the drop-down list to update variables individually.
7. Or Select the Bulk Update option from Actions in the toolbar to add a new value for selected variables across multiple calculations for a model.

To view Audit Log:

• Select Task > Manage > Subtask > Application Administration > Audit Log

The power users can see the audit log for the below user activities:

• Users navigating to variable management landing page (view)
• Users updating the variable value individually
• Users updating the variable values via bulk update
• Variable update failure

Best Practices 

Common Guidelines for Dimensions

Key type dimensions :

• Growing dimensions, such as Products, Projects, Customer, Companies
• Dimensions that need to be scoped, such as Scenario, Time, Measures
• Dimensions that might be used in a formula reference

Value type dimensions :

• Static dimensions in terms of size; they are not growing rapidly
• Dimensions with a large number of levels (if possible, it could be defined as Attribute)
• Departments, Regions dimensions

Size Guidelines

Key type dimensions :

• Growing dimensions, such as Products, Projects, Customer, Companies
• Dimensions that need to be scoped, such as Scenario, Time, Measures
• Dimensions that might be used in a formula reference

Value type dimensions :

• Static dimensions in terms of size; they are not growing rapidly
• Dimensions with a large number of levels (if possible, it could be defined as Attribute)
• Departments, Regions dimensions

Model Building: Tips

• If dimension names or types are incorrect after saving, you need to use "Modify Model" to make changes. You can either delete or modify the dimension type using this option.
• You must have at least one Key and one Value dimension defined
• The order of your dimensions in Model Setup will dictate how your dimensions are displayed in the Analyze task.

Full Refresh

• Adjust rollup operators to ‘’ in dimensions like Scenario, Time, Measures, Reporting as needed (one-time setup).
• Run refresh by each Scenario and Year combination rather than running all scenarios in one step.
• If you have QTD or YTD measures in your model, make sure you run a formula to get the expected results at the quarter level and year level after the Aggregation step.

Incremental Refresh

• Identify the data set that has changed, such as Actual for the current period and prior period.
• Only the changed data will be cleared and refreshed.
• Add any new chart-of-account members to your model as part of your steps, such as adding new accounts. System defined dimensions like Scenario and Time would require different steps.
• If you have QTD or YTD measures in your model, make sure you run a formula to get the expected results at the quarter level and year level after the Aggregation step.

Incremental Refresh – System-Defined Dimensions Process

In Practice: Adding a New Scenario to the Model:

1. Add the Scenario under Model, Dimension.
2. Run Metadata Download under Manage, Application Administration if you are missing the new scenario in the HACPM_Financial model under Model, Dimension.
3. Update the Data Map to include the new scenario and then run the incremental refresh process for the new scenario.

In Practice: Adding a New Fiscal Year to the Model:

1. Add the time member(s) for the new fiscal year under Model, Dimension. Use Append mode by copying the hierarchy from the HACPM_Financial model.
2. Update the Calculation to use the new periods and then run the incremental refresh process.

Incremental Refresh: Tips

• Set up the model refresh through the Scheduler to run overnight automatically.
• Run test model refreshes and adjust the model for optimal performance before moving the model to Production for users.

Model Restructure

Whenever you modify a hierarchy, including adding or moving members or sub-hierarchies, Dynamic Planning performs a restructure operation. Depending on the model size and configuration, the operation can be a lengthy process (4 or more hours). We have improved the restructuring operation to be significantly faster when modifying the hierarchy of large dimensions and models. It is optimized to be completed in less than 4 hours. There is no additional configuration needed. 

If the model is generated and you want to update the hierarchy, then simply lock the model and update the hierarchy. 

You can optionally select to enable a Data Storage Partitioning enhancement. It is an opt-in feature and will be enabled only for selective customers based on the use case. This data storage partitioning enhancement splits the internal model storage and stores leaf-level and rollup-level data separately, thus improving the performance of some operations, such as running a hierarchy update or running a map. Contact Planful Support if you want to opt-in to this feature.