Hyperion Planning Workflow Management
Workflow in general mean process flow or data flow or
serious of actions. This in hyperion planning mean a secure and confident
numbers to be on reports with an efficient way of approval process from data
entry into system to finalizing level.
To make this understand better, let’s say I have a team who
looks after balance sheet , P&L , Cash flow etc.., reporting and I have
assigned their duties accordingly to gather the financial numbers from
different departments & accounts and
provide me consolidation & detailed levels of data which would be submitted
by department specific people / in-charge analysts. They would get the data
from ERP/EBS system which has OLTP data(actuals), and they would be fed into Hyperion Planning
System and then forecasting would be done on those actual numbers. So now I
have analysts coming to me all the day with their numbers for review and
approval where I have send/reject them number with corrections or correct
numbers on other hand I have to take care of other activities and meeting which
would seem hard to manage and Hyperion Planning Workflow process has saved my time
! and life ! with series of approval process J
. So the analysts now won’t be coming to be always for review but rather they
would be in touch with account in-charges for numbers review who in-turn would
be submitting them to me as a final number/review. So with this process I don’t
have to think too much on whom to question or catch on wrong number because now
that I have strong process laid which helps to identify whom should I question
or gather this as I have department/account specific in-charges reviewing those
numbers before coming to be if there are any mistakes.
In Hyperion Planning workflow management is achieved by
planning unit hierarchy and scenario version assignment which means you would
have a planning unit against which you would attach/tag your scenario &
version members for which you are planning on.
Planning Unit Heirarchy (PUH) is made up of Entity dimension
and any other secondary dimension (which can be standard or custom dimension)
and Scenario & Version combination as a mandatory for workflow (PUH) to be
started or to be in action.
Let’s see how it works with example.
To create a planning unit , login to Workspace or Hyperion
Planning and goto Administration ->
Approvals ->
Planning Unit Heirarchy
Click on Create.
As I told you already
PUH consists of Entity as mandatory dimension & any other secondary
dimension.
You can enable approval process for either all entities or
few entities which you wish to have confident numbers planned on ,
All – All Entities
Custom – You can define specific generation members level on
which you want .
None – No any entity
Let’s say I have selected All , it would be of below view
where first check box column indicates enabled/disabled which can only then
have secondary dimensions mapped.
Dimension column allows us to select any secondary dimension
to select against the entity and define the members from that secondary
dimension.
Now
all generation 3 members in Entity dimension would be selected as below.
If you haven’t observed last section of your first tab Approvals template , it says the
planning we are doing is bottom up or top down or free form which are version types.
I have made Account as secondary dimension and selected members
on which I wanted approval process to be on. So I have selected parent member
in account dimension as Headcount and inputted 1 in Relative Generation which
means all generation members from Headcount level, you can take help of auto
include option available beside once you give relative generation number and
select auto include it would pick all members of specific generation under that
parent members into selected members section.
So now this mean you are enabling workflow process for
Beijing x Headcount WL1 , Beijing x Headcount WL2,Beijing x Headcount WL 3
etc.. which next tab would give exact picture.
Now click Finish, and we have created planning unit now.
We have to assign scenario & version combination to this
created workflow by below method.
You
will get below screen
Click on Save to save the changes/ scenario & version
combinations you added.
Now your workflow creation is completed.
To start your workflow ( to have the secure approval process
for your entities and accounts you need
to start your workflow only then the owner of those accounts would get access
completely). Oops I think I have missed ownership concept. If you refer 3rd tab in planning
unit heirarchy which says Assign Owners to the entity x secondary dimension combination
, for this user id’s whom you declare against those combinations in owners
& reviewers column those id’s should have provision on the application and
access on that dimension members. Once the workflow is started no one in the
application will have write access on that combination even the admin will not
have access to input against that combination.
To start workflow go below section
You would be taken to below page
Select scenario & version you have tagged to planning
unit and set go and then tree view.
Start workflow for those combinations you want to enable
secure submissions. Workflow would also enable us to select alternate owners
incase if currently assigned owners are not going to be available using out of
office assistance feature.
Once workflow is started, System won't listen to you , will only listen owner assigned against it. ;)
