In this blog, I mention some of these new
features which we believe have snuck in unannounced and that I suspect could be
the result of numerous enhancement requests.
The two-click Refresh
I realise that this
will have been noticed by almost everyone already but it needs to be included
because it’s a little nugget of gold that everyone will use.
Refreshing the
database is now a simple two click process from the dimension editor!
No more having to go
through the laborious seven click process - yes seven! - via the Application
-> Overview screens and forever being tricked by the “Refresh” button that
isn’t really Refresh and the “Create” button that isn’t really Create… (just
me?)
In fact, quite soon,
we had all developed the habit of having Smart View connected solely to use the
Planning admin extension to Refresh, avoiding the long process altogether.
Clear Empty & Dynamic blocks
Thanks goes to Martin
Skelly for spotting this one.
In Database
Properties, right clicking on an application name gives you the Clear Data
options; All Data, Upper level blocks and Non-input blocks have been there from
the beginning but the two other options Dynamic
blocks and Empty blocks have
appeared more recently.
Dynamic blocks: Clears data blocks that are created from Dynamic Calc and Store members.
Side note: I have personally never used Dynamic
Calc & Store due to the impact on performance, however if anyone has a use
case where it has worked well without performance issues, please comment as I’d
been keen to hear about it!
Empty blocks: Removes empty blocks of data i.e. blocks where all values are #Missing.
Multiple Member Delete
This is something
which I only discovered recently and am not sure how long it’s gone unnoticed!
You can now use the Ctrl key to select multiple members and
delete them all in one go.
Yes, you still have to
select them all one by one and no, you can’t cut and paste or edit them, but
still, it’s still a handy little short cut.
In an ideal world, we would
be able use the usual method of holding the Shift
key to highlight multiple members to delete, move or edit them and, on the topic of the dimension editor,
also be able to cut and paste shared members! Just putting it out there...
Custom Defined Functions
Again, I have to
credit Martin for noticing this one!
When creating business
rules, the Custom Defined Functions are now available in PBCS.
The functions that
we're already putting to use allow you to manipulate dates. CDFs make working
with dates much simpler, for example adding a year to a date is as
straightforward as:
"Next Date" = @CalcMgrAddYears("Start Date",1);
I recommend everyone
checks out these functions – they’ll enable you to do calculations you never
even knew you wanted to do!
And also, some you’ll never want to do.
I hope there will be something here that
every administrator will find useful and time saving. As always, feel free to
comment or mention other features that you may have been pleasantly surprised
to find.
Ciao for now!
