Using the "Carry Forward From" option

­­General Discussions
61

Great solution! Thanks for sharing

62

Thank you for sharing!

63

Very informative, thank you

64

This is great info, thank you
Prophix

65

I think this can help to update one of my reports. Thank you!

66

We do the similar thing but when importing Actuals from ERP, that enables us not have to set them manually and easier to create running forecast reports.

67

@alexandra.bengtson, we have adopted this approach in some cases as well. What I like about the named set approach over the flag approach is this:

  1. Much better formatting control: I can format entire cell colors, fonts, borders, etc. for the columns differently for actuals vs forecast, not just a label at the top
  2. The same named sets can be used for other purposes related to import processes, for example importing ACTUALS values into the ACTUALS named set months and FORECAST values from other cubes into the FORECAST named set months.

There is an administrative requirement, of course, to make sure these named sets are updated monthly to the proper values, and if they are not set to the right valued, users will be confused and data entry may occur to the wrong intersections that would then need to be cleaned up. But that’s the case with any named sets that change values monthly, so this downside doesn’t have to be a show-stopper.

68

To everyone following this topic and considering the “Active” flag approach I’ve outlined here, I’ve found a few downsides that I have to deal with. These aren’t major, but they do have side effects on some reports that are built, so you want to know about them before diving in whole-hog:

  1. Since it’s a calculated field, there’s a value for every intersection for every past month. This affects the “hide missing rows” feature for other dimensions because there will always be a value.

  2. For non-leaf members, the totals will be summed, so the ‘1’ vs ‘0’ approach has to take this into account. a ‘1’ value at the leaf node will be added up to include all generations above it, which will vary dependent upon the number of descendants of the parent.

  3. To overcome #2, sometimes I put the actuals flag in its own data view, so I can pull just a single row for the purposes of the flag. This means an extra data view in my report. Not a show stopper but definitely not as globally straightforward as I was hoping it would be.

  4. For TIME conversion, we have options: use last value or sum. Default is sum.
    SUM means that at the year level, you’ll have a flag of ‘12’ for actuals rather than a ‘1’. (There can be advantages to this approach, specifically in that it tells you the number of actual months in any year, which I use in some places to indicate a mix or even a percentage of actuals.

69

Very helpful, thanks for sharing.

70

Great information Bob, thank you for sharing!

71

Quality information. I will recommend it!

72

I will recommend it to my colleagues! Very interesting!

73

This is an awesome new feature I was not aware of! I’m going to take this away to my organization! Thanks so much for bringing this to us.

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74

great information! thank you

75

Thank you Bob! I will give this a try for our reforecast.

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76

great information! thank you

77

This is a neat use case for this feature. Thanks for sharing Bob!

78

Very nice this topic, helped me

79

This topic is very good, it helped me a lot in my day to day life.

80

Great Info, thank you !