The November Cloud EPM update (21.11) was recently released to test environments and will be pushed to production environments on the 19th. As usual, there are several interesting features being released, but one stuck out to me as long overdue and worthy of a post. A new Smart View extension will allow books to be imported into Excel in a refreshable format.
Before we can look at the functionality of books in Excel, we have to install the extension in Smart View. Open a new Excel workbook and login to a Cloud EPM environment. From the Smart View ribbon, open Options.
From the Options window, go to the Extensions tab and click on the Check for Updates hyperlink.
In the window that opens, check the locations to update. Click Get Updates.
The extensions tab should now show all the additional extensions available for install. Click Install for EPM Books.
Restart Office if prompted and reopen Excel. From Smart View Options > Extensions, the EPM Books extension should now show as enabled.
Select EPM Books from the Panel.
All the books for the Cloud EPM application will be listed. Click the run icon for a book to open it.
The status of the book will then appear in the Jobs Console.
Click the refresh icon to update status. When the book is ready, a confirmation window will open, click Yes to open the book.
A new Excel workbook opens. The first tab is a table of contents, and each report in the book has a tab in the workbook.
Clicking the hyperlinks in the table of content goes directly to that report.
From the Books ribbon, the EPM book can be refreshed or the POV updated.
Selecting Edit POV opens the POV selector. This sample book only has one selection available.
Change the member and click OK, a status window will open.
And here’s where we hit a glitch. We expected the book to update with the new period selection of Mar. However, when we click the Inspect icon in the ribbon, the POV is still on Feb.
It would seem EPM Books functionality has a bug. Or does it? Going back to the Smart View ribbon, we open Panel and refresh the Jobs Console. There are now 3 books available.
Clicking the second one downloads the refreshed book.
We confirm the new download has the updated period.
And the report we previously viewed has updated data.
If you’re wondering why there were 3 and not 2 books in the Panel, we edited the POV a second time not realizing that the first time worked. This also happens when you click the Refresh icon, a new book will show in the Jobs Console and needs to be downloaded with the refreshed content.
The Jobs Console not only lists the current EPM connection books, you can also access books from other connections that had been run. Select All Servers from the drop-down.
More books are available to refresh and download. You will be prompted to login for other books on different connections if not already connected to the source application.
Jobs can be deleted that are no longer relevant.
Overall, pretty easy to use functionality that gives users another option for managing EPM books. The only hiccup we had was figuring out how to view a report after updating the POV. When the POV is edited, or the book is refreshed, a re-download of the book is necessary.
As always, happy EPM’ng!
Random EPM Notes 