Members on the fly

Ushir Shah
1/20/2016

Table of Contents
Executive Summary................................................................................................................................. 2
Select members to be enabled for dynamic children ............................................................................. 3
Refresh Database .................................................................................................................................... 4
Creating Variables and Business Rules.................................................................................................... 5
Create a Menu and attach BR ............................................................................................................... 11
Regulation on dynamic children by System Administrator .................................................................. 13
References ............................................................................................................................................ 15

Executive Summary
On multiple occasions, business comes up with a requirement to add dimension members
dynamically which if done by the System administrator is a time consuming activity if the
urgency of Business needs has to be considered.
An illustration of the requirement would be the Business requirement of PHCC which
is as follows:
1500+ Asset items were added to Asset Class dimension in seeded Capex module.
With the ongoing budget cycle, the Business Users requested new Asset items to be
added on a daily basis for which dimension members had to be created by Evosys
team following the standard steps and thereafter refreshing Essbase Cube to reflect
the effect in the Planning Application.
With Dynamic children Option enabled in 11.1.2.4 for all Planning applications and not
limited to Workforce Planning, Capital Asset Planning, Project Financial Planning and Public
Sector Budgeting.
Users themselves get the capability to add members to the dimension in a fairly controlled
manner in the Application without the intervention of System Administrator for refreshing
Essbase Cube.

Select members to be enabled for dynamic children

In the dimensions page of Planning application, select the member that you want to enable for dynamic
children.
Check the option "Enable for Dynamic Children" on, and input the Number of Possible Dynamic Children (By
default is 10).
NB: that it is not the children number that limit to the parent but the limit number that can only add one time
before refresh to Essbase. I will explain more detail later.

Here is the hierarchy that you can see in the Planning interface, no children are added at this moment.

Refresh Database
After refresh the data to Essbase, open EAS and you can find 10 "placeholders" are added to the parent.

Creating Variables and Business Rules

Hyperion Planning uses business rules to trigger the dynamic members management, add or delete
members. So before you can use the dynamic dimension members feature you need to go to
Calculation Manager to create a business rule.
We need a runtime prompt variable for entering new member name, click Variable button to open Variable
Designer.

Find out the application and plan type that you want to add the variable then create a new one.

Input the variable name, select the Type as Member. Select the dimension for the member, check RTP on and
input RTP Text. Then select the Member of Dynamic Member Parent.

Select the Member for the Dynamic Member Parent and press OK.

Save the variable and continue.

Then switch to the System View of Calculation Manager, create a new business rule.

Input the business rule's name and press OK.

Check the box "Create dynamic members", and then select Variable for the dimension.

Select the new added variable and then press OK.

Save the business rule.

Create another business rule, repeat the steps as above but check "Delete dynamic members" this time.

After these two business rules are saved, deploy them to Hyperion Planning.

Create a Menu and attach BR

Business rules are not very convenient to run directly in web forms, so we can create a menu to call them by
right-click. Create the menu as below.

Then associate the menu to the demo form.

Now you can open the demo form and then right-click the product dimension member as below. Select Add
New Product in the menu.

Input the name that you want to add, then press Launch.

Without refresh to Essbase, you can input data directly in the web form of the new added member.

Regulation on dynamic children by System Administrator

We can add at most 10 members (The number we set in the dimension member property page) in one time
before refreshing to Essbase. If we continue to add more the following error message will come out because
we have only 10 placeholders in the back-end Essbase. But we can continue to add more after we refresh to
Essbase because the placeholders are released.

If you want to delete the new added members, highlight the member that you want to delete, select Delete
Product in the right-click menu.

Press Launch to delete it.

Now you can find the member is deleted as below.

That's the layout in the Planning interface. The members are dynamically added by the business rules, which
means the basic planners can add members on the fly now.

References
http://www.hyperionepm.com/?tag=11-1-2-4
http://hyperionplanningandmore.blogspot.ae/2014/05/enabling-for-dynamic-children-option-in.html