Updated HFM Tuning Guide

A new version of the official HFM Tuning Guide has been released by Oracle. New additions to the document include:

• Basic information about custom dimensions in HFM 11.1.2.2
• Section describing recommended web server timeout settings for IIS and OHS
• Better explanations for commonly tuned HFM registry settings
• An example case of tuning the memory settings for an HFM application

The guide can be downloaded via the following Oracle Support article:

Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) Performance Tuning Guide, Fusion Edition [ID 1083460.1]

The following statement in the new tuning guide also caught my eye: “A complete list of all published HFM registry settings can be found in Appendix A of the Oracle® Hyperion Financial Management, Administrator's Guide starting with Release 11.1.2.2.300”. This useful document is available in the Oracle EPM Documentation Library for Release 11.1.2.2 (direct link to hfm_admin PDF).

Top Gun 2013 Presentations

As already noted by our friends over at the Oracle Business Analytics Proactive Support blog, the presentations from this year's Infratects Top Gun conference are now available for download. The presentations cover EPM infrastucture topics ranging from the initial planning and design phases to hands-on installation and troubleshooting sessions. To get the documents just head on to www.infratects.com, select News & Events and pick the link "Top Gun 2013 Presentation Downloads -29 Mar 2013" under Latest News.

New Features Overview For EPM 11.1.2.3

While waiting for the release of the upcoming EPM version I thought I would publish my notes from the Oracle webcast covering new features in EPM 11.1.2.3. If you want to find out more details about each product I recommend you to reserve two and a half hours and listen through the entire webcast as it contains nice presentations from each of the EPM product teams. The recording is available via the Oracle BI&EPM EMEA Partner Community blog.

In the Top Gun conference we also received lots of interesting information about the changes that 11.1.2.3 will bring to EPM infrastructure. Unfortunately Oracle does not want to share this information until the new release is made publicly available so you will have to wait patiently for the juicy technical bits until then...

Support For OBIEE And Other Goodies Added To Smart View

Oracle has just released Smart View Patch Set Update 11.1.2.2.310 which brings dozens of fixed defects but also a big bunch of new features into everyone's favorite Office add-in. Read on to find out what's new in this release.

New Feature Highlights 

Support For Oracle BI EE

Smart View now allows users to connect to OBIEE 11.1.1.7 or later - after this long-awaited version gets released first. The following features are (or will be) available:

• Connecting to OBIEE Presentation Server
• Viewing the contents of the Presentation Catalog
• Importing BI Answers views from Presentation Catalog into Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
• Copying OBIEE Dashboard content and pasting it into Smart View client documents. The data, metadata, and view layout are all copied.
• Programming OBIEE features using Visual Basic: adding OBIEE objects, managing prompts etc.

For complete overview of the OBIEE features in Smart View 11.1.2.2.310 see the Readme file for the PSU on Oracle Support.

Shared Connections Definition File

This feature seems to have been invented because EPM Workspace does not (yet) integrate with OBIEE. To use OBIEE connections in the Shared Connections menu in Smart View, you need to create an XML file which contains the provider connections for your EPM and OBI environment. The path to the XML file is then specified in the Shared Connections URL field in the Smart View Options dialog box, after which the entries should appear in the Shared Connections menu.

Office Table Report Object

A new MS Word only feature allows you to insert a table that is formatted just like tables in Office applications normally are. Office tables can be imported into for example HFM Smart Slices and then used as a part of Word documents. Table formatting tools and styles can be utilized and they are preserved when data and members are refreshed.

Other New Features

Smaller additions that are also worth mentioning:

• Document Contents is a new pane that displays the structure of the current Office document in a tree format 
• Cells containing HsGetValue functions can now be copied between Office applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• Shared Connections can be used in functions for HFM, Essbase and Planning

Be sure to log on to Oracle Support and study the full Readme file for PSU 11.1.2.2.310 as the file also contains information about fixed defects and known issues and their workarounds. And remember that according to the EPM Certification Matrix you can use Smart View 11.1.2.2 with older EPM/Hyperion releases too (HFM, Planning and Essbase 11.1.2.x, 11.1.1.4, 11.1.1.3 and 9.3.3 are compatible - see the Certification Matrix document for full details).

resetConfigTask Utility

Here's a tip for those who haven't yet subscribed to the Hyperion Error of the Day blog maintained by Nicholas King. Nicholas has written a useful post about the resetConfigTask utility which enables you to reset the task configuration status for any given EPM product. This may be useful in case you want to reconfigure a certain module after a failed configuration attempt. The utility is available starting with the EPM 11.1.2.2 release.

Link: Hyperion Error of the Day blog post: resetConfigTask.bat

Force EPM Web Language To English

Long time, no blog posts... Unfortunately I have been too busy at work to give much thought to my blog but here comes a small and useful trick I have been using quite a lot lately.

Many companies use EPM/Hyperion products throughout their world-wide organization. Latest EPM versions have been translated into a large number of languages which is naturally a good thing for all the end-users wanting to view the web interface in their own language. Supporting software that allows the language to be chosen by users (or by the web browser in this case) can be  challenging though - it may not be easy to deal with error reports shown in Chinese or Finnish for example.

Infratects Top Gun 2013 Event Announced

If you work with EPM/Hyperion products and are interested in the technical aspects of the products in any way - these are the dates you should already book in your calendar! The second annual Infratects EPM Infrastructure Top Gun Event will be held on March 15th and 16th in Barcelona, Spain. Watch this space and the Infratects website for more detailed information soon.