Print Reports and FREE Utilities
  • 07 May 2022
  • 7 Minutes to read
  • Dark
    Light

Print Reports and FREE Utilities

  • Dark
    Light

ReportWORQ includes free utilities, which are based on a small sampling of ReportWORQ's full capabilities, to help users get more value and productivity out of the Planning Analytics' Excel reporting capabilities, be it using Perspectives or Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE). There are two free tools available through the ReportWORQ Excel add-in ribbon that is installed with ReportWORQ:


  1. Print Reports: This provides PAfE users with the same "Print Reports" experience and capabilities they had in TM1 Perspectives, and which are not currently offered in PAfE. The Print Reports feature uses the powerful, fast ReportWORQ report creation and distribution engine to create Excel and PDF output based on an existing Excel workbook. Print Reports currently supports the Custom and Dynamic PAfE reporting modes.
  2. Audit Report: This audits an existing Planning Analytics-enabled Excel workbook's formulas. It recalculates the workbook and generates an audit report documenting each Planning Analytics Excel formula and its arguments, highlighting any potential errors and providing an easy mechanism to analyze those Planning Analytics reports and their usage of your Planning Analytics data.

Getting Started

In order to use these utilities, you will need to request a free license by clicking on the "Print Reports" toolbar button and filing out the license key request form. More information on license request and activation steps can be found in License Requirements.

Print Reports and Audit Report will always operate on the active workbook in Excel (the one currently on screen in Excel), so before clicking on either of these options please open up a workbook that you'd like to use with either utility!

When you click "Print Reports" with a Planning Analytics-enable report open ReportWORQ will make a copy of your current report and do a scan of it for Planning Analytics content. This information is then used by the Print Reports wizard, which is designed in a way that should be familiar to Print Reports users in Planning Analytics' Perspectives Excel add-in.

Prerequisite: Configure Planning Analytics Server Connections

If you have never established a connection to a Planning Analytics server before from ReportWORQ Print Reports will help locate and guide you through establishing those connections. When you launch Print Reports, ReportWORQ detects any Planning Analytics server connections that it doesn't know how to connect to you'll be prompted to configure those connections:


The process to add missing connections is identical to those documented in Connection Configuration. You will need to resolve any missing connections in order to proceed.

NOTE: ReportWORQ makes separate connections to Planning Analytics servers instead of attempting to reuse existing Perspectives or PAfE connections. This is because, in the interest of maximize stability and performance, ReportWORQ does not rely in any way on Excel or those Planning Analytics add-ins to automate the generation or audit of Planning Analytics-enabled Excel reporting content. You can return to this connection maintenance screen at any time by clicking on the "Edit Connections..." link in the Print Reports user interface:


Step 1: Select Sheets to Include for Print Reports

The first step in the Print Reports wizard allows you to select which visible worksheets in your workbook should be included in Print Reports output. Simply select one or more worksheets in order to proceed:


"Select All" and "Select None" options are available for quickly resetting selections for all worksheets.

NOTE: Print Reports will automatically include any hidden worksheets in generated output, ensuring that any formula references are safely maintained while producing your reports.

Step 2: Select Dimension Subset "Looping" Parameters

When ReportWORQ originally scanned the active workbook it detected all available SUBNM formulas for every worksheet. Those are presented as Dimension selections on this wizard screen for all selected worksheets:


By selecting one or more of these dimensions you are telling Print Reports that you would like to have it loop through each element in a dimension subset and create a copy of this worksheet, updating the cell in the referenced cell address with that element and recalculating that copied worksheet.

Print Reports provides a preview of the "Total Excel Workbooks that will be generated" based on the selections that you make here. That metric is driven by both the selected dimension parameters as well as the "Print Single" vs. "Print Multiple" workbooks option.

Overriding Dimension Selections

You can override dimension selections on this screen in two ways:

  1. Change the Dimension Nesting Order: when multiple dimensions are selected on the same sheet you can use the arrow buttons to move a dimension up or down relative to another. This impacts the order of worksheets and workbooks generated, for instance allowing you to order report output by all department worksheets for one business unit vs. all business unit worksheets for one department.
  2. Override Dimension Subset Selections: It is possible to override the selected Subset as well as the list of elements to be used in your Print Reports job. Simply click one of the edit icons , which will open the appropriate selection dialog.

The following shows some examples of overrides made to the original screen above:


NOTE: Like in Perspectives, a Private Subset with the same name as a Public subset will always take precedence in Print Reports.

Step 3: Choose Output Format and Destination

The final step in Print Reports is to select the output format and destination. Output can be saved in Excel or PDF format, and will be saved to the location specified, which will either be a folder location (Multiple Workbooks) or file (Single Workbook).


For Excel output, you have an additional "Create Snapshot" option, which will remove all Planning Analytics Excel formulas, but preserving all other Excel formulas in the output.

NOTE: We don't offer a direct "Print to Printer" option, but if you do need to print reports we suggest generating PDF output and printing from those.

File and Sheet-Naming Conventions

ReportWORQ's implementation of Print Reports uses a naming convention for generated worksheets (Single Workbook option, Excel output format) and generated workbooks/PDF files (Multiple Workbooks option) that is similar to the one used by Perspectives' Print Reports feature:

  • Worksheet names: <Original_Sheet_Name>_<Dimension_Param_Name1>_<Dimension_Param_Name2>_...<Dimension_Param_NameN>
  • Workbook names: <Original_Workbook_Name>_<Dimension_Param_Name1>_<Dimension_Param_Name2>_...<Dimension_Param_NameN>.xlsx

Any Alias defined for a chosen dimension subset parameter in Print Reports will be used, if available. Note that sheet names are limited to 31 characters, and a numeric suffix may be appended to ensure uniqueness if the generated sheet name exceeds that limit.

Step 4: Run the Print Reports Job

When you are ready, you can click "Finish" to run your Print Reports job, which will take you to a final screen where you will wait to receive notification when the job has completed:


If needed, you can click Back to edit any settings and run another job using the same report again, or simply close the window if you are finished.

Loading & Saving Print Reports Jobs

Print Reports supports loading settings from Perspectives' Print Reports jobs (.prt files), as well as ReportWORQ Print Reports jobs (.prjob files). This provides a quick way of re-running the same Print Reports job on a specific workbook. To load a settings file, simply click the "Load..." button in the lower left of the interface.

You can also save your Print Reports Jobs as .prjob files, which is a newer format that supports saving all settings that you define in the interface, including specific element overrides. The Save or Save As... buttons can be used for this purpose.

Supported Reporting Modes

The Print Reports utility currently supports the following reporting modes:

Perspectives

  • Slices/TM1 Excel Formulas
  • Active Forms

Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE)

  • Custom Reports
  • Dynamic Reports

Audit Report

Another free utility provided by ReportWORQ is the Audit Report capability, which can be used to understand how your reports use Planning Analytics Excel formulas and Planning Analytics data. This can be useful, in particular, when troubleshooting problems with existing reports or when you are planning a migration from Perspectives to PAfE, since some formulas are calculated differently in PAfE.

To begin, make sure you have opened an existing Excel workbook that you wish to audit and click the "Audit Report" toolbar button in the ReportWORQ ribbon. You will be asked to select the name of a file that will contain the results of the Audit Report:


By default, ReportWORQ uses the name of the current workbook with an "_audit" suffix. When you are ready to run the audit, click OK. During the audit process, ReportWORQ fully-recalculates a copy of your source workbook and analyzes every Planning Analytics formula for potential errors, while also documenting how the formulas are using your Planning Analytics data. When the process is complete, you will be presented with the result of the audit report in Excel:


The audit report's information is laid out in the manner described in documentation of the full ReportWORQ Audit Reports feature., reading from left-to-right:

  • Locations of formulas: helps you find the type of and location of the source formula in the original report
  • Calculation results: helps you see what the calculated result was, along with any potential formula errors or warnings about your usage of each formula
  • Referenced Planning Analytics Objects: helps you understand what cubes, dimensions, etc. are referenced by each formula

NOTE: Audit Report, like Print Reports, requires you to configure ReportWORQ with any required Planning Analytics Server connections used by your reports. If you need to set up additional connections, simply use the "Edit Connections..." link in the Print Reports user interface, as described earlier, before using the Audit Report option.


Was this article helpful?