by Doug Correa | 06 17, 2014 | EPM, FDM, FDM Classic, FDMEE
One of the great things about FDM is scripting. Sometimes certain actions cannot be performed by standard application functionality alone. That’s where scripting comes in. You can customize and enhance your FDM application with scripts. Scripting is vital to nearly all FDM Classic applications I’ve worked on. So, when it comes to FDMEE, you keep hearing about this new scripting language called “Jython“. You’ve got other questions, too. Here are answers to your most common FDMEE scripting questions. 1) When we upgrade from FDM Classic to FDMEE, will we need to rewrite our scripts? Yes, some of your scripts will need to be re-written. Learn More Unlike FDM Classic which exclusively uses VBScript, FDMEE offers various scripting options depending on the type of script. The following diagram shows a breakdown from Old World (FDM Classic) to New World (FDMEE). It’s possible to leverage existing FDM Classic event scripts and custom scripts when upgrading to FDMEE. I’ve done it before. But you’ll have to re-develop your import scripts, mappings scripts, and custom scripts. 2) So, the de facto scripting language for FDMEE is Jython. What is Jython? Jython is the Python scripting language integrated with the Java platform. Learn More You can find plenty of resources out there for Jython programming. Check out Jython.org for starters. Also, the FDMEE Administrator’s Guide has several Jython script examples to get you started. 3) For our upgrade, we have to transform some of our existing FDM Classic scripts from VBScript to Jython. How difficult will this be? It shouldn’t be too hard. To precisely gauge the level of effort requires an audit of your...
by Doug Correa | 06 11, 2014 | EPM, FDM, FDM Classic, FDMEE
What happened to my data? Why are my totals off? Why the *@#%! do I have to reload the same set of data AGAIN!? I’ve heard these questions on many-a-implementation involving FDM data loads to HFM and Essbase. Here’s why. Re-loading Trial Balance Data – It’s not uncommon to load trial balance data multiple times during the close. After all, it typically takes accountants and controllers a few passes to finalize their month-end financial information. Supplemental Data – It’s also not uncommon to have information for a single entity come from multiple sources. Consider trial balance data from the general ledger system and statistical data loaded manually via Smart View or data forms. The above data load circumstances can often lead to data integrity issues. This is where a custom FDM data protection solution can help. Data protection is about protecting target system data from being overwritten by multiple data loads to the same point of view. FDM Data Load Options Both FDM Classic and FDM Enterprise Edition (FDMEE) support two data load methods: Replace and Merge. For illustration, consider this example. Statistical data, e.g. headcount and units sold, is loaded once during the close. Conversely, during the same month-end cycle trial balance data is loaded several times as the financial information refined and finalized. Loading Data with Replace Mode When data is loaded using the standard Replace mode, the data for the specific point of view (POV) – Scenario, Year, Period and Entity – is cleared in HFM before FDM loads the new data set. Drawback – All data for the entity is erased. Based on our example,...
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