HPCM Management Ledger Part 3 - The Rule Dimension

In my last couple of posts I took you through some walk-troughs, showing you how to first build an HPCM Management Ledger Application, then how to build a Rule.  This time around I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how the Management Ledger application type is structured, specifically the 2 system dimensions built by the application.  (‘Rule’ and ‘Balance’ Dimensions)

With this post I’m going to focus on the Rule dimension, so let’s open up EAS and take a look at what we have.

This is the dimension where Management Ledger will store each part of the allocation.  Your initial load of “allocable costs” – for example account balances as well as driver values, will be stored at ‘NoRule’ member, and each rule you run will be stored to one of the ‘Rxxxx’ members.  You might wonder which of these many rules ties back to the rules you wrote in Management Ledger, well do you remember this screen?

Right at the top of your rule description, you can see exactly which member of the Rule Dimension it is tied to, neat huh?  

With all that in mind, the question comes, what member do I need to look at when I want to view my final values? Well its simple, just select the top member, the beauty of Essbase says, all aggregates up, and that is where you will find the final aggregated values of the allocated costs for your application. 

Another common question is why do I have 1000 rule members, I only have 50 rules? Well, the outline is yours to edit, you can add or remove members as you please, if you want to cut it down to 100, do it, no harm.  But I would warn that you should keep extra members available in case you add a new rule, don’t want to have to go back and add a member then a rule, that’s just extra work, and no one likes extra work.

But what if I want to have more than 1000 rules you ask? Well in that case add more members.  You can add as many as you really need, or so that’s the claim- I am yet to see this documented by Oracle - and  I haven’t yet tested exceeding 9999 rules, but if you really do have that many, you should reevaluate your requirements and  allocation design as it may be a challenge to maintain it at that point. 

I hear someone saying “Hey Dan, you forgot to talk about the Calculation Programs member” and I hear you, and honestly, I am not positive what it is used for yet, I think that Management Ledger is using this as a temp space during calculations and since it doesn’t aggregate up to the parent, it doesn’t matter as part of our total.

I hope this helps everyone get one step closer to utilizing HPCM Management Ledger application type, this application shows a ton of potential and looks to truly revolutionize how we handle cost allocations within Essbase.   

In my next post on ML, I will further elaborate on the ‘Balance’ Dimension, and how this critical dimension is the true key to understanding your data.