OLAP Toolbar Blog

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Dynamic Report Building – Leveraging Excel VBA

One optimization we’ve been striving for with all our clients nowadays is dynamic reporting – the goal is to create reports that are future-proof to GL hierarchy changes. Consider the P&L report below: Note that the Expense accounts (colored orange) are divided into subcategories Compensation, External Labor, and Strategic. These subcategories are then further drilled […]
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Xcelerate Security Overview

Xcelerate Security One of the more common questions we get both during and after an Xcelerate implementation is “How does Xcelerate Security work”?  Xcelerate’s security is not complicated; however, there are multiple elements to it. The following diagram provides an illustrative overview of the different Xcelerate security elements.  Each is described in further detail below. […]
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Resolution: Clarity Spinning Mouse Issue

I typically don’t use my Blog for standard support type items as the IBM Support site does a good job in that regards.  In the past few weeks however I’ve had a larger than usually number of requests regarding 2 specific support issues – so I figured it would make sense to document the resolution steps. […]
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Clarity 7 Instant Documentation

In the world of Information Technology I understand the requirement for and the importance of system documentation. After some time even the team members who worked on a project will find well organized documentation useful in remembering how a system works and how all the pieces work together. A Clarity implementation is no different and […]
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Setting Query Timeouts in Clarity 7

Although Clarity 7 performance is fantastic, occasionally we come across OLAP or relational queries that are slow and cause Clarity to timeout. I was talking about this recently with a good friend of mine, who is both super smart and knows Clarity extremely well, and she said “Just make the query run faster!”.  This is […]
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Generating Daily Clarity Logs

I recently came across the following entry on the IBM / Clarity Support site and I thought I would pass it on. By default Clarity stores all log entries into 2 files (found in \Clarity Systems\ClarityServer\Logs) that continue to grow until you delete them.  These can quickly become too large to be useful and can […]
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Renaming Clarity 7 Row and Column Groups

Another common request I get from clients is how to rename the row and column groups within an OLAP data map.  To clarify what I’m referring to, it is the data retrieval specification groups that fall under Column and Row Members in an OLAP Data Map.   By default Studio calls these Group1, Group2, … […]
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Adding Custom Confirmation to Toolbar Items

I’m normally against custom code in Clarity templates and reports.  Too many times I’ve seen consultants build code rather than find a way to satisfy the requirements using existing base functionality.  This makes templates & reports harder to maintain and difficult for clients to figure out after the implementation team is gone.  This was especially […]
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Showing Tabs on Export to Excel

One of the most common Clarity customization requests we get is displaying tabs when reports are Exported to Excel.  Standard Clarity installations output the grid to Excel with the same elements exposed.  For example, if the Clarity grid shows grid lines, then the Export to Excel will show grid lines.   The same holds true […]
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Using MDX Hierarchize to Properly Order Data

Without any ordering being applied, MDX by default will return data in the same order the members exist in the outline.  This would be the same order you see visually when maintaining the outline with children following their parents. For an example let’s look at a typical Time dimension that starts at Full Year, has […]
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Should You Upgrade to Clarity 7?

With the upcoming Clarity 6.2 support deadline looming at the end of this year, there has been a lot of debate among Clarity clients who are still on 6.2 as to whether they should upgrade, stay on version 6.2 or look for another planning solution.  I may be a little biased here, but I would […]
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Removing Clarity 6 Template Builder from Excel

Something I’ve noticed consistently at many Clarity 6 clients is that the Clarity Administrator and others responsible for building templates and reports get stuck with the Template Builder loading (slowly) every time they open Excel.  I use the template building ½ the time and I still find this annoying – I can only imagine how […]
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Clarity 7 Report and Template Guidelines

In any system implementation it’s a good idea to have standards and guidelines for development and presentation.  Clarity is no different.  When all Clarity templates and reports have a common look and feel, users know what to expect and a level of professionalism is achieved.  For example having light yellow as input cells on some […]
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