We have integrated InfoAssist into our PMF dashboard.

I have a request from management to show them how to create measure reports in InfoAssist, because this is what our user community is wanting / needing to do. I can create ad hoc reports in InfoAssist off of our data mart, but how would I, and ultimately the users, create reports the display in some way the measures we created and loaded into PMF?

Thank you.

The InfoAssist tools are not designed to report off applications. They report off databases or files.

The idea with InfoAssist is you would use it to create reports against operational data. If you are running these IA reports as gadgets, or calling them from PMF drills as operational reports, you can pass drill values out of PMF to them so they all sing the same song.

The PMF application itself performs aggregation and calculation which you would have to replicate in the tools, and this would not be easy, so why do it when the easy way is to use the built in facilities in PMF?

Is there a type of report or view that you can't use an existing gadget for, or can't design in Analysis Designer? If you are looking to combine charts or Flex and grid style reports you just do this by dropping each on the PMF dashboard surface. Any Analysis Designer grid can be promoted to a gadget in a few simple steps.

See the PMF Developer Guide for more information.

thanks - hope this helps.

Thanks, Bob.

Your reply will be helpful to educate management on what expectations are appropriate for InfoAssist with PMF.

No problem.

There was a question buried in there about if the capabilities of reporting off PMF data within PMF are sufficient. Let me know if there's any gap you can find compared to what you need. That would be great feedback and also would get you the capabilities you need.

thanks

Management had learned that InfoAssist is an ad-hoc reporting tool for users. It would have be been very beneficial if in addition to that, an explanation similar to yours would have presented during the sales process, so that correct expectations could have been made from the start.

I'm not sure that their statement is wrong. In fact it's right. InfoAssist is just what they said - an adhoc reporting tool for users. They told you the truth. InfoAssist lets you do reporting for the rest of your data. PMF already has an adhoc reporting tool of its own - Analysis Designer. This is a subtlety that a salesperson wouldn't be able to clearly represent, probably.

Note that, as the architect and designer of PMF and other apps, I don't have a profound effect on how we sell software. But I did design Analysis Designer - including the new version that's coming out with 5.3.0, and am asking if that design does the trick for you or if there's something you need in it that's missing.

thanks

I will ask management why they want to use InfoAssist for what the Analysis Designer can do.

Does the Analysis Designer in 5.3.0 have an InfoAssist output option? What I'm getting at is what if a user could create a report in the Analysis Designer that would get saved as a hold file so that InfoAssist could report off of it? This way the user can have more flexibility with creating their own defined and computed fields, and other things they can do in InfoAssist that they can't do with the Analysis Designe.

Bob, where can I get info on the 5.3.0 release?

Analysis Designer can create hold files today. You have to use a little trick, that's all. Design the view, then save it and use the Saved Parameter tool to see the code. You can edit the code and change the WFFMT to a data formal such as XML or ALPHA and then use that output for anything else.

Have a look at page 27 of the PMX Platform Developer Guide.

hope this helps.

Since it's months away, we're not giving out info on that yet. But expect greatness.

I've read the documentation, per your suggestion.

So, to see if I understand you correctly, is this what is required:

1. I create a gadget that creates a hold file for use in InfoAssist.

2. When users want to use InfoAssist to report on the data in that hold file, they run the gadget to make sure the data in the hold file is current.

3. Then they launch InfoAssist and do their ad-hoc reporting.

Is that correct?

Yes, if they're attached to using InfoAssist, that is. We think Analysis Designer itself does a pretty good job, and if it doesn't, we want to make it better.

We use the AD templates to generate our Flex data for the Flex gadgets, for example.

I do agree with you, Bob, that Analysis Designer does a pretty good job. But, for example, you can't create you own defines and computes in Analysis Designer.

Assuming that they must use InfoAssist for PMF ad-hoc reporting, would it be possible to put an InfoAssist option in the Analysis Designer so that it creates the hold file and then launches InfoAssist with that hold file already selected? Or would it be better to make this a New Feature Request for?

What defines and computes would your users want to create? Most of these types of things are already available in the field model for AD. If any are missing we can add them.

thanks

Per management, what they want is to do more sophisticated filtering, rather than defines and computes. For example, you can't in 5.2.2 multi-select from a location dimension drop-down.