Announcing the Essbase Ribbon, Part 2 – Power Adhoc Ribbon

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Many of you used the Essbase ribbon I built 10+ years ago. I have been asked by many to build a similar ribbon for Smart View. Today I am introducing the Power Adhoc Ribbon. It has all the bells and whistles of the old ribbon completely re-engineered for Smart View. There is a nominal fee, but you can try it for free. Some of the awesome features are summarized below.

The Power Adhoc Ribbon has it’s own website where you can get updates, download the most recent version, and read more about what the options and future enhancements. Head over to the Power Adhoc website for all the details.

  • Refreshing worksheets is the cornerstone of any adhoc reporting. We put refresh on steroids. You can refresh the worksheet or all the worksheets in the workbook, but we added even more. The ribbon has two other options that let you refresh with suppression on or off, without changing your Smart View settings.
  • We know you change your aliases all the time. Now it sits on the ribbon to toggle it on the fly. Change between no aliases and the default aliases whenever you want, quickly and efficiently.
  • The ribbon also includes quick options to change your aliases between default and none. It doesn’t stop there. You can also toggle your formatting between Excel and Cell Styles.
  • Now, all your most commonly edited worksheet settings are on the ribbon, including zoom, suppression, and retention. When you change worksheets, the ribbon automatically updates to reflect the current worksheet settings.
  • What do you do when you want to distribute those workbooks with Smart View functions? Zap will remove all the functions in your worksheet or workbook with the values they return and leave any Excel formulas.
  • How many times have you wanted to duplicate a worksheet and been frustrated because it doesn’t copy your settings and connection? That is now a thing of the past. The worksheet duplicator will copy any worksheet and include the connection and worksheet settings.
  • The Power Adhoc ribbon adds a complete template management vehicle. Commonly used worksheets can be saved in groupings and reused at a later time by opening them right from the ribbon. Group them by application, purpose, or however you want. Templates can be starter adhocs or standard reports. You manage your templates and how they are organized. Your templates can be renamed, reorganized, or removed at any time.
  • Power Options allows you to show/hide the options you want. You no longer need to see the options that aren’t relevant to you.
  • Because you maintain your subscription, we can easily let you know when updates are released.  As soon as any improvements are available, you will be the first to know.
  • Not everything on the ribbon will be new to you. To reduce the need to toggle between ribbons, the most commonly used options from Smart View are included.
  • To reduce the learning curve, every option has a power tooltip that explains its purpose.
  • By having a subscription, you get all the updates and you decide what enhancements are prioritized. If there is an enhancement you need, ask for it.
  • Many operations, like refreshing and submitting, can sometimes take longer than you expect. Just to make sure you can monitor those requests, we notify you how long it took by updating Excel Status Bar.
 
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Excel Ribbon Part Duex – I got a second wind!

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For years, people have asked me to build a new ribbon to supplement Smart View that replicates the functionality I have in my Essbase Ribbon.  Multiple people have hacked into it and made it their own.  One company is selling it.  For that reason, I had zero interest in doing it again.  Time has passed, and here I am, building a ribbon.  It will again have common functions in one place, as well as some additional ones, like

Read more
 
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Getting The Most From Your Oracle Support

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Nobody will argue that Oracle Support is a word class experience.  Like it or not, the service is here to support thousands and individuals can get lost in the process.  If you navigate the process correctly, you can get results. Read more

 
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Hybrid Planning / Essbase Gotchas

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Having the best of both worlds, ASO and BSO, doesn’t come without some gotchas.  Before you jump in with both feet, beware of some things that are not supported in hybrid.  As of Friday, May 22, 2020, @ISMBR in planning does NOT work.  Read more

 
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Get Groovy FREE for 12 months!

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Oracle is providing free access to Oracle Financial Statement Planning, including Strategic Modeling, to all existing Oracle Planning Cloud customers for the next 12 months.  This includes the use of Groovy.

You would be able to purchase Financial Statement Planning and Scenario Modeling if you choose to continue using it. Alternatively, your right to use Financial Statement Planning and Scenario Modeling will expire after April 30th, 2021.

And yes, Hackett Consulting is a preferred provider to help you take advantage of this.

The Oracle FAQ will provide answers to your most of your questions.  If you would like to take advantage of this, let’s get the ball rolling!  If you are a do-it yourselfer, the following classes will kickstart your ability to implement Groovy.

Try it out for free getting a few samples.

 
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PBCS/EPBCS Data Import Options

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Importing data directly into PBCS can be done in two ways.  There is a planning format and an Essbase format.  Yes, it can be loaded through Data Management, but this is focused on explaining the direct import process, the formats, and the benefits to each. Read more

 
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Oracle EPBCS/PBCS May Updates – Big Changes!

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I don’t normally write up monthly updated, but this month there are a number of intriguing changes/updates/enhancements that are important to know.  Some may change existing processes.  This is not an exhaustive list, but these are things I think all of us should take note of. Read more

 
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Drill Through to Data Management and Stay In Excel

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There is a new, and often requested, option added to Smart View.  If you use drill through to Data Management (PBCS) or FDMEE (On Prem), download the most recent release of Smart View.  We, as users, now have the option to change where the result of our drill through queries is returned.  Users can either be asked where the result should be displayed, have it displayed in your browser, or (drum roll) have another tab created that holds the results in Excel. Read more

 
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Backup Up Essbase Cloud (EssCS) Applications

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The good news is migrating to the cloud doesn’t change a lot when it comes to backing up your Essbase applications.  Conceptually, it is the same.  The utilities used are slightly different. Read more

 
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Replace Special Characters with PowerShell

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I have been swamped with project work and webinars, so I haven’t been able to put a ton of time into finalizing new posts.  I have a lot of thoughts and new topics started.  So, expect some new Groovy examples and possibly some Essbase Cloud content.

Unti9l then, I came across this really nice little tidbit when trying to replace special characters in a file and thought those of you who are using PowerShell would benefit by having it.  The beauty of this is that you don’t need to know which characters need escaped.  For those of you like me that aren’t well versed in this topic, not having to know which characters need escaped to work will speed up the development of similar functions.

The following snippet is a simple function that accepts 3 parameters.

  1. The string to be searched with the characters to replace
  2. The string that will replace the characters
  3. The string of characters that need replaced

This function has defaults.  the first is required, but the second and third are not.  If the second and third parameters are now supplied, the defaults – #, ?, (, ), [, ], {, and }  – will be replaced with a blank string, effectively removing them.  These parameters can be passed, and the defaults will be ignored.

function Replace-SpecialChars {
  param(
    [string]$InputString,
    [string]$Replacement = "",
    [string]$SpecialChars = "#?()[]{}"
  )

  $rePattern = ($SpecialChars.ToCharArray() |ForEach-Object { [regex]::Escape($_) }) -join "|"
  $InputString -replace $rePattern,$Replacement
}

Replace-SpecialChars (Get-Content c:\test\replace.txt) | Set-Content c:\test\replaceNEW.txt

The above will create a new file named replaceNEW.txt with the contents of replace.txt, but will exclude the characters supplied to the function.

If this doesn’t make sense, take a look at this.  Let’s say we want to replace every x with xray.  The following command would accomplish this.

Replace-SpecialChars (Get-Content c:\test\replace.txt) "x" "xray" | Set-Content c:\test\replaceNEW.txt

So, this isn’t just for special characters!

If you have a cool script, share it by commenting!

 
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