Thanks, your the best and we are so pleased to have the opportunity to share our time tested tips and tricks with you all

If you are new to TM1 Tutorials, take a moment to read through the topics we have covered about IBM Cognos TM1 Development over the last 5 years on this website.

If you have a slow or seemingly substandard solution on the IBM Cognos TM1 platform, please take heed – its not normal, it can be fixed – TM1 should never be slow!

The problem could be one or more of the following:

• Over feeding.
• Improper Data Staging / Staggering.
• Wrong frontend for the purpose - (e.g. Perspectives for MS Excel over WAN).

As always, if you’re ever in a bind – feel free to call our Australian consultants who have been pouring their expertise into sharing best practice development for years. If in Australia I will personally attend our first meeting and configure a solution for you.

Kind Regards,
Ben Hill
Director & Principal Consultant
InfoCube Consulting (Australia) Pty Ltd

And one after the data is accidentally flushed out:

There are 2 ways to navigate to the Transaction Log window through TM1 Perspectives:

1. Click on your Server name from the list and Click Server > View Transaction Log
2. Right click on your server name and click “View Transaction Log”

Either way, you’ll be presented with the “Transaction Log Query” popup window in which you can select the start time, end time, clients, and cubes transactions to be viewed.

Note: If you receive an error upon opening the transaction log have a look at this post about a issue on Windows Server and Windows 7 Onwards.

Click ok and you’ll see the “Transaction Log Query Results” window.

If you would like to reverse one transaction only, you can click on that transaction and go to Edit > Select to select that transaction only. You can also use the Shift key to select a group of rows or the Ctrl key to select rows that are not next to each other.

However, if you have queried the exact time, clients, and cubes which transactions you would like to reverse (which is what we’ve done for this example), you can choose to simply Select All. If you have more than 5100 more, TM1 will let inform you that it might take a while to reverse this transactions through a pop-up window.

To undo these transactions, go to Edit and click “Back Out”

Once the process is done, the changes made to your cube would be reversed and your cube will once again looks like this:

If I have one bone to pick, it would be the user-friendliness of the Query Results windows. Rather than abusing the Edit button, perhaps it could have been simpler if we could select the entries by ticking the boxes or if we could use the right click button to select our options once the selection is made.

However, aside from that, Transaction Log is a simple and efficient way to reverse data changes in your cube.

If you would like assistance developing Turbo Integrator Processes or Cube Rules for your TM1 Solution, the friendly team of Consultants at InfoCube Consulting Australia can help. Enter your details in the contact form here.

There are several ways to achieve that within TM1, the simplest way to do this within a Excel report is to write a MDX query inside an active form.

For this example, lets use a standard Payroll model to rank staff based on their salary.

First step – generate the view in TM1 Perspectives.

TM1 view for Excel Reporting

Then export it to Excel as an Active Form:

Basic Excel Report

Now, let the fun begin! The next step is to write a MDX statement inside this view which might not be an easy task for those who have never interacted with MDX.

For this particular view open formula for B18 cell (the cell that holds TM1RPTROW function that generates rows for the active form).

Open formula dialog and scroll down a fraction, there is a MDX parameter:

MDX parameter for TM1RPTROW

Let`s start with simple all level 0 elements MDX subset that selects all elements of one dimension and then filters it to the lowest level only.

{TM1FILTERBYLEVEL( {TM1SUBSETALL( [Employee] )}, 0)}

There are two MDX functions in the expression:

1. {TM1SUBSETALL([Dimension])}
2. {TM1FILTERBYLEVEL(Subset, Level)}

TM1 Excel Report with Level 0 elements (MDX subset)

Next step is to sort this subset. This kind of sort does not work all by itself, it requires data, in this case the sort criterion is “Base Salary” column, in this case this is an easy task since the view is constructed in excel Using dropdowns on top.

MDX ORDER function:

ORDER({ElementsToBeSorted,DataSet,DESC)}

ElementsToBeSorted – use aforementioned expression for getting level 0 elements.

DataSet – this is a cubeview.

[CubeName].([Dimension1].[Element],…,[DimensionN].[Element])

Use DESC/ASC as per requirements (top or bottom elements) for numeric values, or use BDESC/BASC for text values.

In this particular case DataSet should look like this:

[Salary].([Year].[2012],[Month].[All Months],[Scenario].[Actual],[Department].[All Departments],[Measure Salary].[Base Salary])

Full MDX expression:

ORDER({TM1FILTERBYLEVEL( {TM1SUBSETALL( [Employee] )}, 0)},

[Salary].([Year].[2012],[Month].[All Months],[Scenario].[Actual],

[Department].[All Departments],[Measure Salary].[Base Salary]),DESC)}

Now there is only one step left – limit the output of the MDX. In order to achieve this, apply HEAD function around current MDX espression:

HEAD(SUBSET,NumberOfElements)

MDX Expression for limited subset (10 elements):

HEAD({ORDER({TM1FILTERBYLEVEL( {TM1SUBSETALL( [Employee] )}, 0)},[Salary].([Year].[2012],[Month].[All Months],[Scenario].[Actual],[Department].[All Departments],[Measure Salary].[Base Salary]),DESC)},10)

Attach this MDX expression to the report, rebuild it, enjoy.

This xlsx file is attached to the post, please use it as a reference.

Sample Top 10 Report

TM1 Excel report based on Top 10 MDX list

Stay tuned for more posts covering Top 10 topic soon!

My recommendations for writing turbo integrator code, which can easily be read and more importantly understood:

Variable Naming:

Variable names should start with a type indication letter then followed by logical name starting with a capital letter i.e. nTotalSales or cCubeName.

The following prefixes give you enough flexibility and are easy to remember:

• c for constants
• n for numeric variables
• s for string variables
• p for parameters
• b for bool/logic values

Constants are specified in Prolog/Epilog sections (common usage is cube or dimension name) and do not change during TI execution. It is extremely useful to set constants for all static things that TI refers to. This eliminates repeated manual entry and minimizes time to modify a TI.

Boolean or logic values are not necessary but can make one`s life easier.

Function Calls:

I recommend reserved TM1 words like ELISANC or DIMIX to be spelled in capitals can help to avoid possible confusion with variables or constants.

Indentation:

Last but not least, indentation, which not many people know is actually a built-in function. The hotkey is Ctrl+I and it works like TAB in other text editors. The only thing that could upset TI editor is that an indent is treated as a special character and it does not act like space, so that  ‘           TAB     ’ and ‘        SPACES        ‘ are treated differently: spaces are ignored while indents are not.

With Windows Vista, 7 and many of the newer server editions of Windows a Microsoft security fix has removed a component which TM1 Perspectives & Architect use to display the Transaction Log browser.  This component is called “MSMask32.ocx” which traditionally belongs in the System32 folder.

To get this working again on these machines:

1. Download the component here: msmask32.zip
2. Save these to the appropriate folder below:
   • On a 32-bit computer save to C:\Windows\System32\
   • On a 64-bit computer save to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\
3. Run the following command either from the command line or from the “Run” window:
   • On a 32-bit computer run: “RegSvr32 MSMask.ocx”
   • On a 64-bit computer run: “C:\Windows\SysWOW64\RegSvr32 MSMask.ocx”
4. This should (if all goes well and you have local administration access) immediately enable the Transaction Log window in Perspectives and Architect.

IBM Tech Note: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21469061

• sc delete “Service Name”

Note: If you have a TM1 Service setup as: “TM1 Server x64 / Production Server” you will use the following command

• sc delete “Production Server”

Is it about time you cleaned up the NT Services on your adminhost?

While Notepad++ is a great tool for text and script editing, unfortunately it doesn’t support TM1 development. Therefore, we’ve created a TM1 add-on for Notepad++ which includes syntax highlighting and code folding for  bothTI process syntax and cube rules (especially great if the advanced rules editor doesn’t work for you).

TM1.zip (xml file in a archive)

To install this, start Notepad++. Go to View > User Defined Dialogue.

User Defined Dialogue - Notepad++

Click Import. Select the TM1.xml file attached above and click Open, then restart Notepad++.

To use the add-on, go to Language and select TM1 from the list.

This will then transform your TI processes and Cube Rules to look like these:

TI Process - Notepad++

Cube Rules - Notepad++

We’ve also added the syntax to enable users to use capitalisation, upper or lower case, which means that this add on would be able to highlight the syntax whether it is written as “AttrInsert”, “ATTRINSERT” or “attrinsert”.

If you would like assistance developing Turbo Integrator Processes or Cube Rules for your TM1 Solution, the friendly team of Consultants at InfoCube Consulting Australia can help. Enter your details in the contact form here.

1. Open TM1 Server Explorer (Perspectives)

2. Right click on your server and select “Server Manager”. From here you can actually do a few things like:

• Disconnecting Users and
• Shutting down (but not restarting) the server

3. Tick the box “Broadcast a Message” and enter your message. Ensure “Do Nothing” is selected at the top of this form.

4. Click “Select Clients” and chose the users you want to send your message to. Note that if you send the message to your username, the session you are sending from will not get the message but if you are also logged in elsewhere you will receive the message there.

5. Press OK on the “Server Manager” Screen to send you message.

This is how it will appear to your users:

If you have any questions about this or any other TM1 features please contact us by commenting below. We would love to help.

#Region *The title of this region goes here*
*Rules go here*
#EndRegion

You can even add regions within regions. Like so:

#Region 1. Sales Rules
	#Region 1.1 Revenue
		['Revenue'] = N: ['Units'] * ['Price'];
	#EndRegion
	#Region 1.2 COGS
		['COGS'] = N: ['Units'] * ['Standard Cost'];
	#EndRegion
#EndRegion

This example could also extend to showing the corresponding feeders with the same format: “#Region 1. Sales Feeders”.

Check out the gallery below to see just how much more readable this rule is:

If you would like assistance developing Turbo Integrator Processes or Cube Rules for your TM1 Solution, the friendly team of Consultants at InfoCube Consulting Australia can help. Enter your details in the contact form here.

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