Jim Miller

Serviceability What is application serviceability?  “Serviceability (also known as supportability,) is one of the -ilities or aspects (from IBM’s RAS(U) (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, and Usability)). It refers to the ability of application support personnel to install, configure, and monitor an application, identify exceptions or faults, debug or isolate faults to root cause analysis, and provide […]

If you’ve ever attempted to perform a performance test on a TM1 application, you know that there is not really an effective way to manually create sufficient load on a model. Getting “real users” to execute application operations – over and over again – is nearly impossible. Thankfully, an automated testing product can solve for […]

In an earlier blog post, I pointed out a number of companies complete a BI Strategy but only to shelve it shortly after its completion.   One main reason is that companies let their BI Strategy atrophy by not maintaining it; however, the other main cause of shelving a BI Strategy is that it was not […]

I have been with a number of companies that have completed a BI Strategy, but have not followed and implemented the strategy.   Generally, we have seen two overarching reasons for this.  Either the strategy was allowed to atrophy OR there was something fundamentally wrong with the BI Strategy in the first place. I will focus […]

TM1 TurboIntegrator is the programming or scripting tool that allows you to automate data importation, metadata management, and many other tasks. Scripts built with TurboIntegrator or “TI”, can be saved, edited and, through the use of chores, be set up to run at regular intervals.  TI scripts can be used to process existing TM1 data […]

Objective Making modifications to TM1 rule files can (potentially) affect both the TM1 application and the TM1 server (that the application is running on). Rule modification or reprogramming can cause loss of data, changes in how the application responds (performance) and unexpected changes in memory consumption. In addition, it can be difficult to effectively test […]

General Coordination From a general testing perspective, consider the following: Identify and visit the test site before the planned testing days Establish an “onsite” coordinator – usually someone associated with the facility (hotel or facilities manager, perhaps) who will be responsible for any facility provided accommodations Inspect and Validate any and all facility provided accommodations […]

Overview The purpose of this post is to provide a strategy for approaching and resolving a “concern” that has been identified within a application. Overall, the idea is to “add structure” to the process of responding to defects (remediation) in your application. Steps to Remediation Using a resolution methodology referred to as CERT, the steps […]

Typically, a TM1 project will include work to create reports. Most finance groups will have a number of Excel workbooks that they are using for both their forecasting and planning as well as for reporting. These workbooks will become the “templates” for designing your TM1 input sheets and reports. For the reports, you will be […]

The goal of a Practice Center of Excellence (CoE) Solution Assessment is to conduct an impartial review of a particular component (or components) of an identified solution or architecture or to address a particular application design pattern strategy concern. The assessment team will identify the purpose and scope of the assessment prior to beginning the […]

In one of my earlier posts I recommended an approach for loading larger amounts of data into TM1 applications, and provided a high-level explanation of this approach, which I call the “File Route” solution. Some More Thoughts                  I like this load-strategy because, in following best practice guidelines, it leverages TM1’s proven ETL tool, TurboIntegrator to […]

Bulk Absorption Options From a pure architectural perspective, what is sometimes referred to as “bulk uploading” sometimes is (mistakenly) considered to be part of reporting or included in the data consumption component of a TM1 application design.  Loading and/or updating data is part of an applications absorption or configurations components and should be handled with […]