Opt-in Features

Structured Planning Opt-in Features

• Template Notes in Offline Planning
• Employee Number Lock
• Shared Mode
• Retain Formulas in Shared Mode
• Enhanced Workflow and Automated Task Creation
• Workforce Reporting Enhanced Notifications in Dynamic Reports
• Delta Deletions Through Incremental Cube Processing

Template Notes in Offline Planning

This feature allows you to view all notes associated with a template in one consolidated location in Offline Planning.

Employee Number Lock

The Employee Number Lock feature allows you to lock an employee number when you have employees with several positions. The employee numbers for new employees will automatically be created when this feature is enabled. If you want to change employee information, you must do that outside the Planful application by manually reconciling your data.

Shared Mode

This feature allows you to share data between multiple Global Template - Single Copy (GTSC) templates. If changes are made to a GTSC template within an account, with the Shared mode enabled, this data is updated for all other GTSC templates within that account. This feature is not recommended for existing tenants because it may corrupt the existing data.

Retain Formulas in Shared Mode

This feature allows you to retain formulas in the Shared mode. When a formula results in zero and you upload the data through DLR, the formula remains the same and is not overwritten by zero.

Enhanced Workflow and Automated Task Creation

The Enhanced Workflow and Automated Task Creation provide Planning Administrators with an enhanced ability to control and organize tasks necessary to complete the planning process. For users, these enhancements offer the ability to systematically complete assigned tasks methodically by tracking and updating workflow actions. If the Workflow Setup remains disabled, the Planning Control Panel will continue operating in line with its current behavior. However, enabling Workflow Setup triggers specific application behaviors:

• Enabling Workflow Setup for a scenario and starting the process activates automated tasks and multiple authorization functionalities.
• If Workflow Setup for a scenario remains disabled, the Planning Control Panel operates as usual without automated tasks and multiple authorization functionalities.

Regardless of whether Workflow Setup is enabled for a scenario or not, Workflow Actions for Templates are activated, allowing access to Forward and Approve actions for templates.

Workforce Reporting Enhanced Notifications in Dynamic Reports

This feature enhances your dynamic reporting process by providing notifications for dynamic reports.  

Delta Deletions through Incremental Cube Processing

This feature improves the efficiency of the Automatic Data Refresh functionality for segment combination deletions by using the Delta_Delete_ICP flag. When this flag is enabled, the system automatically identifies the deleted segment combinations and processes only the deletions incrementally. This helps resolve issues related to reporting performance, errors, and cube processing time.

When segment combination data is deleted, the corresponding values are set to zero. Users can now exclude rows or columns with these zero values in dynamic reports by using the Suppress: Zeros feature.

Dynamic Planning Opt-in Features

• Formula Reference Manager
• Model Restructure

Formula Reference Manager

The Formula Reference on the Model Formula page streamlines the creation of multi-dimensional formulas. Use the Reference Manager to specify a dimensional intersection from any Model dimension. This improvement enables you to reference necessary dimension members' intersections while defining formulas easily. It simplifies the process of creating multi-dimensional formulas within the Modeling Cloud.

Access the Model Formula by navigating to Model > Formula. You can define a reference by copying and pasting the Exchange Rate from the Formula Design to the Formula Member. Then, access Reference Manager through the Formula Reference cell. For more information, click here.

Model Restructure - Data Storage Partitioning

Dynamic Planning initiates a restructuring operation whenever you modify a hierarchy, including adding or moving members or sub-hierarchies. Depending on the model's size and configuration, this operation can be time-consuming (taking four or more hours). We have enhanced the restructuring process to significantly increase the speed when modifying hierarchies in large dimensions and models. The process is now optimized for completion in under 4 hours, requiring no additional configuration. If the model is generated and you wish to update the hierarchy, lock the model and proceed to update the hierarchy. 

Optionally, you can choose to enable a Data Storage Partitioning enhancement. This is an opt-in feature and will only be activated for select customers based on their use case. This enhancement divides the internal model storage, segregating leaf-level and rollup-level data. This segregation improves the performance of certain operations, such as running a hierarchy update or executing a map.

Consolidation Status Report

The Consolidation Status report is an opt-in feature to view the status of the Consolidation Process for a given intersection (entity, scenario, period) within a close cycle. The Consolidation Status report offers several benefits, such as providing the necessary information to complete the close process promptly.

Reports Opt-in Features

Automatic Data Refresh

The Automatic Data Refresh functionality automatically processes the data in case of any updates in templates or data posting via standard or dynamic journals. This avoids manual processing of data. The functionality applies only to the Financial cube. For more information, click here.

Dashboards Opt-in Features

Dashboards Administration Workforce Reporting Access for Dashboards

If the configuration is enabled, the administrator can control access to WFP data in reports and dashboards. If disabled (default), all users can access all data, including WFP, based on report and dashboard security.

To provide users with access to Workforce Reporting, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Maintenance > Admin > User Management.
   
   
2. Select a user.
    
   
   
3. Click the Security Options icon.
   
   
4. Select Workforce Reporting Access.
    
   
   
5. Select a user or user group in the Unmapped Users/User Groups pane.
   
   
6. Click the forward arrow. The selected user/user group will appear in the Mapped Users/User Groups pane.
   
   
7. Click the Save icon.
   
   

• Asynchronous processing for export data
• Custom URL
• Data Load Missing Segment Member

Asynchronous processing for export data

Export Data is handled asynchronously in all newly configured applications, enhancing the application's performance by processing requests with a quick response time. Processing Export Data requests with large data sets synchronously can negatively impact the application's performance. To improve efficiency and experience, enabling asynchronous processing is recommended for your application.

Custom URL

Planful customers have the option to establish a personalized URL for their Planful application. For instance, a customized Planful URL could be configured as xyz.planful.com. For more information, click here.

Data Load Missing Segment Member

This feature, available by request, eliminates data load failures due to missing segment members. Missing segments represent those that are not available in the Planful system but are available in the data files loaded to Planful. For example, during a web service file load, the load will fail if Planful encounters segment members not in the system. However, you may now use this opt-in feature, which automatically adds missing segment members.

For instance, let's consider a segment member, Account X exists in a data file you are loading to Planful. However, Account X is considered "missing" because it does not exist in Planful. With this feature, the system (Planful) will add Account X with default properties. Upon completion (of the data load), you will receive an email indicating which segment members were created/added. At this point, you may modify the added Account X's default properties and position it properly within the tree structure. Then, rerun the Data Load Rule so all data loads as intended. To ensure that the account properties can be changed, enable “Enforce changing the account properties when the data is available” on the Maintenance >Administration> Security Administration page.

Predicted Hide Old Signal Mode

This flag enables the option to hide closed periods or old signals. The value for this flag can be either 0 or 1, where 0 signifies that the flag is disabled.

• Adra SSO
• Google Drive Native Integration
• SFTP Native Integration

Adra SSO

The Account Reconciliation feature empowers customers to expedite and enhance their planning and decision-making processes, providing a fully integrated solution. It accelerates the end-to-end Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), consolidation, and accounting close processes within a seamlessly coordinated environment, fostering faster and more confident decision-making. For more information, click here.

Google Drive Native Integration

Enabling this feature helps you to load GL, and translation data from Google Drive to the Planful application. For more information, click here. 

SFTP Native Integration

For SFTP Native Integration, you must activate the EnableSftpDataLoads flag and gain access to the FTP/SFTP option. For more information, click here.