For this new blog post, I am excited to tell you about one of my favorite features: Dynamic Member Creation. Beginning with Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) release 11.1.2.3, Dynamic Member Creation is available in pre-delivered plan types such as Project Financial Planning, Public Sector Planning and Budgeting; and as part of the core Planning application starting with release 11.1.2.4. This new feature allows the planning user to dynamically create new metadata members on the fly without a complete re-deployment of the planning application. Administrators must still reserve generic members in the outline, but users have greater flexibility in naming metadata members.
Prior to release 11.1.2.3, the common workaround for dynamic member creation was to reserve generic members in the planning outline or set up master data integration from external relational systems. An example during the budgeting process would be to reserve “To be Hired” positions in a workforce planning application, such as TBH1, TBH2, etc.
The steps to implement this new feature are outlined below:
- Set up a Planning Application.
- Enable the parent metadata member in the appropriate dimension with “Enable for dynamic children”.
You can setup as many dynamic children as desired. In this example, the number of dynamic children is set to 10 and the option “Access Granted to Member Creator” for the child members is set to Inherit default member properties from parent member. Other default member options can be selected. The various options available are listed below.
Click on ‘Save’ after this initial setup and re-deploy the application. After re-deployment, Essbase reserves these members behind the scenes.
The Planning user interface (shown below) does not indicate the number of reserved members; however, you would be able to see them in the Essbase outline.
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- Create a sample business rule with dynamic insertion enabled.
Business rules can be written that allow the planning user to create dynamic metadata on the fly. To create a business rule with dynamic insertion enabled, set the option to enable dynamic member creation as shown below.
The following business rule adds an expense account.
Note the Run Time Prompt Variable {ExpAcct} should be enabled for dynamic insertion as shown below.
- Create a menu item for the business rule
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Associate the menu item to a web form.
A sample menu “Dynamic Insertion” is associated to a web form to test this new feature.
Users will be able to create new metadata members. In this example, an expense account was created called “Daddy needs new shoes.”
Similarly, another expense account was created called Momma wants a diamond ring.
Before refreshing the cube, the metadata members from the above example were created in the Planning Outline:
These members are not reflected in Essbase until you re-deploy the cube. Hence this process would still require a re-deployment to be reflected in Essbase.
This concludes my blog on Dynamic Member Creation. I hope you found this new feature as exciting as I do!
