Flags

Overview

This topic provides detailed information about each flag in the application, enabling customization based on individual requirements. Flags provide control over various aspects, including features, performance, and user experience. By utilizing this information, you can gain a deeper understanding of the purpose and functionality of each flag. Some flags may have prerequisites associated with user roles. Understanding these prerequisites ensures a seamless implementation by verifying that the necessary conditions are met before enabling specific flags.

Backup Data

When the Backup Data flag is set to True, Power users and users with administrator privileges can back up and restore external source models and their artifacts. All the views and reports you create including the backup are stored with the model, and this feature is only available in Spotlight Web.

You can access the Model Backup function by navigating to the More menu of external source models listed in Model Manager.

Once you select Model Backup (with data option), the model is immediately backed up as a ZIP file. Some browsers may ask you if you wish to open or save the ZIP file; otherwise, it's stored in the Downloads folder associated with your browser.

The overall limit is 500 MB, however, the default limit is 200 MB. You may contact Planful support to increase the default limit.

Data Locking for Model

Data locking for the model protects data without allowing it to be overwritten by any data entry, break-back, formulas, and calculations. It specifies one or more models that should be locked. You can contact Planful support to activate the same. It is a two-step process:

1. Set up the data locking definitions via Model > Model Administration > Data Locking.
2. Turn on or off all data locking in the application on the Manage > Application Administration > Application Settings page. Only a power user can do this step.
3. Data locking differs from dimension security in the following ways:

• Data locking is global. You can view the locked data but can not modify it. 
• You can apply data locking to Views, Reports, and Models.
• Data Locking prevents any map, formula, calculation, data load, or API call from modifying the locked data.

Enable ESM 2.0

This edition supports data transformation, date logic, dynamic dimension additions, operational planning, new data types, and formulas and expressions. It helps a wider variety of operational modeling and multiple functions like arithmetic, logical, date, text, Sales Operations, Marketing Operations, Customer Support Operations, and Professional Services Models. You can perform data transformations and define the formulas on the ESM model. By default, this flag is enabled.

Enable Consolidated Write Back

Consolidated writeback functionality optimizes the writeback process when there are multiple writeback steps in the calculation. It consolidates data from multiple writeback steps and performs writeback operations at the end of the calculation. There will be one writeback operation for each distinct DLR used in the writeback maps. For example, if the same DLR is used in all writeback maps in the calculation, there will be only one writeback operation. If two distinct DLRs are used, there will be two writeback operations, and so on.

Enable Print PDF

When a user enables the Print PDF feature flag, a new toolbar icon is displayed when they open any report, below three options are displayed:

• Export to PDF: Users will get a popup for saving the PDF in the system. Click this option to generate a PDF file of the opened report. This is based on the default print setup / last saved print setup.

Note: The name of the PDF will be the same as the report name by default, but users can edit the same and save it.

• Print: Click Print to get the Print pop-up (the same screen which opens on clicking ctrl+p) with the PDF generated from the opened Report.
• Print Setup: Users can directly Print from the Print setup screen. They may change the settings, and it will be considered when the PDF is generated. There is a checkbox to save the changes otherwise, the last saved preference will be retained. Click Print Setup and a pop-up with all the Print Setup options will open.

Note: If any charts are present in the Report, those are printed on a separate page. First, the data will be displayed in the PDF, thereafter, all the charts are displayed. Not all the chart types are supported.

Enable Map Performance

The default value for this flag is False. In Dynamic Planning, we can move data between the multi-dimensional models for common dimension members. This flag enables performance improvements for faster data movement. Previously, it was a single-threaded approach but with this, we have multiple threads each moving a different subset of data.

Enable Write Back with CDT

This flag will consider only changed data cells while performing aggregation or writing back the data to PCR, and the default value is False for this flag. This feature also must be enabled together with the "Enable New Write Back Features" flag as it requires the "Enable CDT" flag to be enabled.

Enable Versioned Hierarchy Management

Enable the Versioned Hierarchy Management flag to update the hierarchy without locking/clearing the model. You can add up to ten versions and publish/delete them. When this flag is disabled, the user will notice the old behavior, and they can not create versions and update the hierarchy without locking the model. The default value is False for this flag.

Enable Formulas from Calculation

The default value of the flag is False. If this flag is disabled, the user can not view the formula in the views/reports formula bar. When the flag is enabled, and a user selects the cell based on the calculation, they can view formulas in the formula bar of view/reports.

Enable Report Optimization

The default flag value for the Report optimization is False. When the user enables this flag, the web/spotlight makes a single call to get the file hierarchy rather than multiple calls for each child folder under the root. Hence it improvises the report and file cabinet.

Enable Model Metadata Backup

The Power users can back up and restore External Source Models and artifacts. You can navigate the Model Backup on the More menu of the External Source Models listed in Model Manager. If the flag is set to true, the application will take a backup before the refresh, and if the flag is set to false, the application will not capture any backup before the refresh.

Enable Variable Management

The variable management can be accessed by power and contributor users, they can view or update multiple variables across different models. It is defined in the application across different artifacts and can be navigated to specific artifacts by using hyperlinks. You can either update each variable by adding the new value or perform a Bulk Variable update across one model for multiple calculations. The variable list will be generated based on the model and calculations selected. You cannot perform bulk operations on a variable that does not have any value assigned to it.

Enable Report Distribution

The Report Collection feature is for Spotlight and Excel Reports. With a report scheduler, you will have the ease of report distribution daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the date, time, and time zones of specific user/ user groups. The power user (Unified tenant) needs to contact Planful support to enable this flag. End-users can access the latest report data via Excel output. With this automated process, you can eliminate errors and ramp up report distribution. 

Enable Aggregation Performance

An aggregation is a mathematical computation involving a range of values resulting in a single value expression that signifies the accumulated data. It is used to derive descriptive statistics, for example, an aggregation function groups the values of multiple rows as input on certain criteria to form a single value of significant meaning. By enabling this flag you can process the data quickly and accurately, reducing a significant amount of time and greatly increasing the performance of the process.

Enable Formula Performance

This flag improves the performance of formula step calculations for all formula members. If the Enable Formula Performance flag is set to true, a new formula code will be applied, allowing you to calculate the formula reference for members based on specified keys. Formula creation with formula reference took longer for high-value dimension combinations. In addition, we improved the formula run-time by skipping a few overheads, significantly reducing the time and effort involved in the execution of formulas for separate formula members.

For more information, please refer to Dynamic Planning Model Formulas.

Enable Aggregation Enhancements

Once you enable the flag in the Model screen, the Aggregation function that previously used the old algorithm will now run with the new algorithm. You can choose which model you want to enable for the same Tenant.

This change enhances the Aggregation Performance and significantly reduces the time previously taken for aggregation.

Enable OData Data Download

The data download process has been enhanced to use the ODATA REST API instead of the SOAP Data API, resulting in improved performance for downloading data. However, currently, filters are only supported on Scenario, Time, and Measures. To activate this feature, contact the Planful Support team.