Dynamic Planning Publishing and Opening Excel Reports, Word Reports, and PowerPoint Reports

Overview

This document discusses how to publish and open Excel Reports, Word Reports, and PowerPoint Reports as well as working with the folder structure.

Publishing Reports

The ability to publish and store reports in the cloud is a collaboration feature to make it easier to store your most common monthly reports in one place. Published reports can be downloaded by other users.

To publish reports:

Create a Template

Publish the Report

Create a Template

Power user access is required to do this step. Publishing reports to the Modeling cloud is intended to be used for your organization’s standard monthly reports, such as those in a board book. A general guideline is to use it for fewer than 10 standard reports, although we support up to 50 reports per application, of no more than 16MB each.

In Practice

1. Select Manage task and the Office Reports, Setup subtask. Here, you can create a template that acts as a placeholder for each report that will be published and made accessible to users. One template can be used for either an Excel Report, Word Report, or PowerPoint Report. Each template reserves a spot for just one report in the Modeling cloud.

2. Enter the report name.

3. Enter the report description.

4. Click Save.

5. In the Group field, specify user groups that should have access to this report.

6. For Access, specify whether user groups should be able to publish or download the report.

7. Click Save.

Repeat steps 2-7 for each template to be created. For example, create a template for the G&A department to see its operating expenses.

Publish the Report

After the Power user has created a template for the report, a user with Publish privilege can upload the report.

In Practice: First-Time Publishing

1. Open the workbook, document, or presentation containing the report with Spotlight formulas, such as the following Operating Expense workbook.

   

2. Click Publish. The Select Report to Publish box appears and you see the report template that was created by the Power user.

3. Select the report to publish (in this case, click 2014 Operating Expense) and click Publish.

   

   Note:

   Before the report is uploaded, the Modeling data is cleared from the file. When the report is later downloaded, the user will see all metadata and data cells as #REFRESH. When the user clicks refresh, only those members and data cells they have access to will appear.

4. You will receive a message indicating that the report has been published. Click OK.

In Practice: Saving a Published Report

Make changes to the workbook, document, or deck as needed and click Publish whenever you want to save and upload the latest version. Because you have already told Modeling the name of the report, you do not need to select the report template name again. The report template name is now embedded into the workbook, document, or deck.

To publish the workbook, document, or deck with a different name, the Power user must first create another template. Then the user can click Publish As and select the other template name.

Opening Reports

After the Power user has created a template for the report, and a user with Publish privilege has published the report, a user with Publish or Download privilege can download the report.

In Practice

1. After logging into SpotlightXL, SpotlightWord, or SpotlightPPT, start with a blank workbook, document, or deck. In Excel, click Excel Report from the left main menu.

2. Click Open. A search box appears and you see the reports that have been published and that you have access to.

   Reviewer and Contributor users without design access see the following screen:

   

3. Click the report (for example, 2014 Operating Expense) and click Download.

4. Modeling downloads the report and immediately asks you to save a local copy of the report. Select the folder on your computer where the report should be saved and click Save.

5. The report is opened separately from the blank report you started with. For security purposes, all Modeling metadata and data cells appear as #REFRESH. Upon clicking Refresh, you can see only those members and data cells you have access to.

6. Click the SpotlightXL, SpotlighttWord, or SpotlightPPT menu item.

   

7. Click Refresh. If there are multiple pages in the report, click Refresh All.

Now you can use the report freely.

Users with Publish privilege can click Publish whenever they want to upload the latest. Because the name of this report was already embedded in the workbook, document, or deck when it was first published, they do not need to select the report template name again.

As has been described, when you download a report, you will save a local copy of the workbook. If you attempt to download the same report again and save the local copy to the same file name and location, Modeling first asks if you want to replace the file.

If you click Yes, you see an error message:

To avoid this error, you can save the second download to a different file name, or you can close the first download before downloading a second time.

Folder Structure

Both the Open and Publish buttons open a box with the reports listed in a folder structure.

Reports are listed or omitted from the two boxes based on their status.

A report template created by a Power user but not yet published will be listed in the Publish box but not the Open download box.

A report template that has been published will be listed in the Open box but not the Publish box.

By default, reports are placed into the parent folder.

You can click Add Folder to create a folder to organize your reports. Then drag and drop the reports into the folder.

The same folder structure appears in the Publish box.

To delete a folder, right click it and select Delete.

To rename a folder, right click it and select Rename.

If a folder contains a report, you cannot delete the folder. You will see an error message, “The folder has children and cannot be deleted.”