In this month’s tip we will be exploring how to display Detailed Planning Object (DPO) members (i.e. what you are planning via Detailed Planning Manager, for example employees) along with their associated attributes (for example hire date) in a template. We’ll go through how to create something that looks like the below with employee names in rows along with attributes for position, hire date and retirement match.
Why might we need to build a template like this? End users only have access DPO attributes through DP Schedules attached to Workflow Tasks. Once they complete their tasks, they will no longer have visibility to the attributes. They may want or need to see these again at a later time, or others who do not participate in the workflow process may need visibility.
Through this tip, we will the cover the following concepts:
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Posting attributes to the cube
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Clone rows
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Custom display properties
We will assume we are intermediate template builders and are familiar with the concepts related to defining/creating data views, inserting data views into templates, and formatting.
Some background to start us off:
- Every Detailed Planning (DP) type cube has a Detailed Planning Object (DPO) type dimension
- For planning personnel, the DPOs are employees
- Every DPO has associated attributes. Attributes are properties or employee specific detail required for planning or reference purposes.
- Attributes give us more information about our employees such as their department, annual salary or hourly rate, state/province etc.
1. Posting attributes to the cube
Attributes are easily accessible in DPM, but some setup is required if we want to view the attribute values in the cube (in templates or data views). From ‘Attributes’ in the DPM Administration drawer, for each attribute we want to view in the cube:
a. Select the attribute
b. Click on ‘Detailed Planning Cube Properties’
c. Select the ‘Member property’ box
d. Optional: Enter the name of the property as you would like to see it displayed in Model Manager. By default, the name will auto populate with the attribute name.
e. Save
We’re all set! Now our attribute values will post to the cube along with our planning data (ex. salaries, taxes, etc.) by employee, when a Post process is run. We can see the results in the DPO dimension in Model Manager (but what about our template? Don’t worry we’ll get there!).
2. Create your template
We have a lovely template started for us here in Template Studio in ‘Design Mode’.
To insert attributes for our employees:
a. Insert a blank column
b. In the Data View drawer, right click on ‘Rows’
c. Select Clone
d. Select the cell in our inserted column, next to the dimension listed in rows
Now we see that rows have been duplicated in the Data View drawer and our dimension member selection for our dimension in rows is duplicated on the template. Hint for later, Rows is represented in B2 in the grid and Rows 1 is represented in A2 in the grid.
e. In the Data View drawer right click on Employees under Rows
f. Select Properties
g. In the pop-up window, select the button with the three dots
h. Delete ‘&name’ from the right pane
i. Select the attribute name from left pane to be displayed in the template (in this example we want the Position attribute)
j. Click the right arrow button
k. Click OK x2
To see what we have accomplished so far, previewing the template we see that our rows expand and show employee names in column A and position in column B (remember our hint after step d above).
To insert and view additional attribute values repeat the steps above for each desired attribute.
To make our report easier to read we can manually type column headers to ID which attribute is listed in each column.
Our final output is:
