epma 101 creating an epma planning app

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EPMA 101 - Creating an EPMA Planning App Housekeeping To take things slowly, I thought I would start by creating an EPMA Planning application from scratch. I chose Planning because: 1) frankly, it is the product I know best, and 2) I have actually done this before in Planning training, so I feel optimistic about it Before I jump in, I need to take care of 3 “housekeeping” items: 1. Ensure that the appropriate EPMA, Essbase, and Planning Windows services have been started on my VMWare 2. Verify that I have security to create an EPMA Planning application 3. Outline some kind of “design” for my Planning application (I know – designing before you build? - absolute craziness!) Note : I have to do step 1 because I am running on a VMWare and I do not have enough resources on my laptop to run everything by default. First, I check to make sure the necessary Windows services are running. I do this on my operating system, through Start | Administrative Tools | Services. Notice that there are 8 total EPMA services, 1 Planning service, and 1 Essbase service, and a number of other “foundation” services required to make it all work (remember that I’m working off of v11.1.1.3). Due to special start-up scripts installed to my VMWare, the proper services are started in just a few minutes. Second, I verify that I have correct security for creating a Planning application, via Shared Services. I am going to use an ID with “god access” – there should be no problems. Note : for those of you not so lucky, the EPMA admin documentation states that you need a minimum of the Application Creator global role for that technology (in this case, Planning) in order to create an application.

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Epma 101 Creating an Epma Planning App

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Page 1: Epma 101 Creating an Epma Planning App

EPMA 101 - Creating an EPMA Planning App

Housekeeping

To take things slowly, I thought I would start by creating an EPMA Planning application from scratch. I chose Planning because:

1) frankly, it is the product I know best, and 2) I have actually done this before in Planning training, so I feel optimistic about it

Before I jump in, I need to take care of 3 “housekeeping” items:

1. Ensure that the appropriate EPMA, Essbase, and Planning Windows services have been started on my VMWare 2. Verify that I have security to create an EPMA Planning application 3. Outline some kind of “design” for my Planning application (I know – designing before you build? - absolute craziness!)

Note: I have to do step 1 because I am running on a VMWare and I do not have enough resources on my laptop to run everything by default.

First, I check to make sure the necessary Windows services are running. I do this on my operating system, through Start | Administrative Tools | Services.

Notice that there are 8 total EPMA services, 1 Planning service, and 1 Essbase service, and a number of other “foundation” services required to make it all work (remember that I’m working off of v11.1.1.3). Due to special start-up scripts installed to my VMWare, the proper services are started in just a few minutes.

Second, I verify that I have correct security for creating a Planning application, via Shared Services. I am going to use an ID with “god access” – there should be no problems.

Note: for those of you not so lucky, the EPMA admin documentation states that you need a minimum of the Application Creator global role for that technology (in this case, Planning) in order to create an application.

Page 2: Epma 101 Creating an Epma Planning App

And, finally, here is my game plan for where I am going with this app – some basic design decisions:

• Multi-currency? Yes

• Default currency: USD

• Number of plan types: 3

• Workforce initialized? No

• Capital Asset initialized? No

• Shared dimensions? Yes

• Local dimensions? Yes

• Time Periods – default

• Years – at least 5

The rest I’ll just make up as we go along.

Now that my housekeeping tasks are complete, I am going to run through the steps to creating a new EPMA Planning application. There are 5 main tasks required for this:

1. Creating shared dimensions through Dimension Library 2. Creating dimension members through Dimension Library 3. Creating a new database for the new EPMA Planning application 4. Creating the base EPMA Planning application through Application Library 5. Deploying the new EPMA Planning application through Application Library

Step One: Creating Shared Dimensions

First, we need to create some shared dimensions. Why do we need to do this first? (and yes, I already tried creating the base application first – bad idea!) Since I want to use a combination of local and shared dimensions, the shared dimensions need to exist before I create the base application. You’ll see - when going through the application wizard, it will ask you to point to shared dimensions that already exist. One situation that would not require this step: creating all local dimensions for this application…but what would be the fun in that?

To create shared dimensions, navigate to Dimension Library, then File | New | Dimension. First, I am going to create a shared Currency dimension.

Next, fill in the details for your new dimension: Name, Description, and Type.

Page 3: Epma 101 Creating an Epma Planning App

Note: I am going to prefix all my shared dimensions with “S_”. However, this is not a scalable practice - in a real world environment, using the same prefix for all shared dimensions is probably a bad idea.

Now that I see that this new dimension has been created in my shared dimension list, I’m going to create a few more – I will use the S_Entity1, S_Product1, and S_Alias in this blog.

Step Two: Creating Dimension Members

When my dimensions have been created, I move on to populating them. I create members for each dimension by right-clicking on the dimension name and choosing to create a new child member.

Page 4: Epma 101 Creating an Epma Planning App

In my Currency dimension I am going to start with creating the USD member – this is required since I will be choosing this currency as my default in the Planning application. Then, to cover the basics, I’ll add in CAD and MXP.

I now have my currencies, but I am not done yet.

First, I need to go into each dimension top member and verify that the properties are configured correctly for a Planning application. I do this for each dimension, starting with Currency.

Note: Some of the settings you make at this dimension level will directly affect which member properties you can adjust. (i.e. – which plan types the dimension is valid for.)

Second, I need to go into each member under each dimension and verify that the properties are configured correctly for a Planning application. So, starting with Currency, I first click on USD, then on the right-hand side of the screen, change the Category to Planning.

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For this example, the Planning configuration settings for the USD currency are shown. I need to go through each currency member and ensure the properties are correct for Planning applications. (Now you can see why people choose more automated methods for loading metadata to EPMA – more on that later)

Once complete with USD, I save the changes and verify the properties for the other currencies. I then move onto creating members for Entity, Product, and some other dimensions I may or may not use in this app (couldn’t help it - I’m a bit anal).

When I am done, I have the following shared dimensions list, with dummy members created for each (just a few since this is a test application). In another post later I will plan to use more automated methods to populate the custom dimensions with more members.

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Note: You can set individual plan types by member in the Accounts and Entity dimensions. This means that you could have certain accounts or entities apply to one plan type but not another.

Step Three: Creating a New Database

Now that my dimensionality is good enough to move forward, I am going to create the new, empty, database for the Planning data source. This is required, as EPMA does not allow you to create a database on the fly during application set-up.

Note: This step could have been done earlier than this point – I just chose to create it at this moment.

Because I have everything installed to my server, and “god access” rights to everything on this server, this is no big deal for me. I just log into SQL Server 2005 as an admin and create a new database.

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Step Four: Creating the Base Application

Next, I need to log into EPMA and create a Planning application. I will need to log into the Application Library, as that is where applications are created and deployed. Once there, I navigate to File | New | Application to create a new application.

I am then presented with some options for this application. I enter the Name of the app, choose a Type (Planning in this case), and enter a Description.

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Next, I revisit my design decisions to help guide me through the rest of the options:

• Multi-currency? Yes

• Default currency: USD

• Number of plan types: 3

• Workforce initialized? No

• Capital Asset initialized? No

• Shared dimensions? Yes

• Local dimensions? Yes

• Time Periods – default

• Years – at least 5

Next, I check “Use Multiple Currencies”, keep the default currency USD, “Create New Local Period Dimension”, and “Create New Local Year Dimension”. I then enter a Period Name of “Period”, a Year name of “Year”, a start year of 2008 and a total of 5 years. My final options for this application look like the below:

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I press “Next”. Now I’m taken to the dimensions screen. I see that the shared dimensions I created earlier are auto-selected for most dimensions. Great! Continuing down the list, since I did not create a shared Accounts dimension, I will create a new local one and mark it as type Account.

This takes care of all of the required dimensions for Planning. But now I can choose to create some custom dimensions. First, I point to the shared Products dimension I created earlier. I then choose to create a new local custom dimension called Customer. It is of type Generic (which is my only option).

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Looking back through the list, I see that I have a good mixture of local and shared dimensions. However, I realize now that I don’t want my Scenario and Version dimensions to be managed by EPMA. So I am going to use the shared dimension as a starter point, but convert it to local for this application. To do that, I go back up to those shared dimensions in the list and check the “Local Dimension” options for each.

My dimension list now looks like the following.

Feeling good, I press “Next”. I receive a message indicating that my new application is being created:

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Note: The application is only being created here – it is not being deployed yet.

Now…what you didn’t see…

I actually had to run through the app creation process more than 3 times because of the “rules” that I broke:

• Once you create a new local dimension in the application wizard, you can’t back out of it. You have to recreate the application again to “start over”.

• Specific rules for creating Planning applications: o Although it doesn’t state it in the documentation, I had to create an Alias “dimension” (either local or shared).

This is a housing mechanism that stores several alias tables. The new Alias dimension cannot be named “Default” – obviously that is taken (duh). But the “Default” alias table is auto-created within it.

o Because the Entity and Currency dimensions are tied together, it appears that they cannot be of mixed type (i.e. one shared and one local). I had to go back afterwards and create a shared Currency dimension so that they would both be shared.

o The same above applies to Alias, it seems. If you have a Currency and Entity dimension that are shared, then your alias dimension also has to be shared. I had to go back and create a shared Alias dimension as well.

And rules from the documentation itself:

o The application must have a name, and it must be assigned to at least one plan type. o The Default Currency property must be defined. o The Start Year property must be defined. The year must be four digits long, such as 2008. o The first year member in the Year dimension and the Start Year property must describe the same year. For

example, if the Start Year is 2008, the first year in the Year dimension must be FY08. o Year members must start with FY, followed by a two-digit year, such as FY08. o The Start Month property must be defined. o The Default Alias Table property must be defined. o The application must include the Planning required dimensions. Single-currency applications require Scenario,

Version, Entity, Account, Period, and Year. Multiple currency applications require Scenario, Version, Entity, Account, Period, Year, and Currency.

o The application must meet the qualifications specified in Appendix B, “Working with Planning Dimensions.”

After a few minutes, I don’t receive any kind of error message. Yippee! My application passed the dimension set-up. Now I come to the final screen – application properties.

Here I can verify the “default” application settings and make changes, as needed. I can then validate to see if there are errors. I go straight to “Validate” – I’m feeling lucky.

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Crap – there are inherent problems with the dimensions I created. I have 34 errors. I go back to the Dimension Library tab (still open at the bottom) and make some necessary edits:

• The data storage settings I put on my Currency and Versions dimensions (Label Only) are apparently not valid. I look in the documentation and realize that Currency, Version, Entity and all custom dimensions should be set to NeverShare.

Note: I didn’t follow the instructions to set all of the start year and end years in each Scenario. When I tried to go back to change this, I realized I could not. Since I have my Scenario dimension set-up to be local, at this point I can’t make this change. I choose to take care of this after application creation.

Satisfied that I have fixed the errors that I am able to, I click “Finish”. I now see my new application in Dimension Library, next to the Shared dimension hierarchies.

I then proceed to fix the remaining validation errors:

• Setting the start and end year for every Scenario member • Setting the start and end period for every Scenario member

When I navigate back to Application Library, I see that the new application has been created.

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It is in a state of “Not Deployed”, which means I have no corresponding Planning application or Essbase database for it, and basically can’t do anything important at this point except continue to refine the dimensionality. So I attempt to validate the application before deploying it for the first time. I do this by right-clicking the application and selecting Validate | Application.

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I then get a window indicating that this process has been submitted as a job. I go to investigate the results by clicking on the hyperlink.

Note: If you accidentally press “Close” and don’t know how to navigate to the Jobs Console (where all the jobs and their statuses are shown), you can get back to it by going to Navigate | Administer | Library Job Console.

I see that the job console has been quite busy, and select the details of my particular job. It is complete, and without errors. Woohoo!

Note: if you have the same issue I do - the validation log does not display at all (mine looks like it’s trying, but then disappears within seconds after opening another window), you can find your log file another way. It is located on the EPMA server in C:\Temp\JobManagerAttachments. The log file names are completely cryptic (and probably correspond to some internal ID) – I just match them up to the date and time of my job, as seen below:

Update: Oracle support helped to resolve my issue with the Validation log not displaying. I needed to do the following in my IE v7.x to correct this issue:

• Ensure that pop-up blocker is turned off

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• In IE v7.x: Tools | Internet Options | Security (tab): o Click on Trusted Sites o Click on “Custom Level…” button o Change the setting Automatic Prompting of File Downloads to "Enable"

Step Five: Deploying the Planning application

Now onto deployment! I navigate back to Application Library and right-click on the application and select Deploy | Application.

I get a nice new window indicating that the application is first validating before deploying.

Since the application validates correctly, I now receive some deployment options.

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First I go through and validate that my Instance Name, Web Server, and Application Server items are correct. Next, I change the Shared Services Project to the appropriate one (“Planning” for my VMWare), and then click the icon create a data source.

I am then greeted by a new window asking for my new data source credentials.

I enter my new data source name and a description and press “Next”. Now I am asked for my database information.

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Since I am using SQL Server 2005, I change the information to point to the correct SQL Server database. Then I press “Test Connection”. Once I see to the left (the message appears in the same screen) that the database connection was successful, I press “Next”.

Now I see a login screen, asking for the Essbase server credentials.

I enter the credentials for an admin user and press “Test Connection”. Once I see that the database connection was successful (the message appears left of the “Test Connection” button), I press “Next”.

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Looks like I’m ready to go with the database set-up! I press “Finish”.

My application deployment options are now finalized below:

Now I press “Deploy” (and hold my breath?). I am then greeted with a nice message, indicating that the process is starting.

And…uh oh. I’ve received a cryptic error message.

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I press “OK” (what else can I do?) and watch it deploy again

…and wait

…and wait…

After waiting 2 long hours, I notice that my screen is frozen. So I kill the VMWare session.

The next day, I fire up my VMWare session again and check to see what happened. I notice in Application Library that the application has successfully deployed (huh?).

To verify, I check to see if the Essbase application and database has successfully been created, in EAS (it has), and I go check the EPMA log (it shows 0 errors).

So it wasn’t a perfect process, but I’m super happy that I was able to deploy a Planning application.