Hello all,

For the sake of this discussion will use the "Prior vs Current" that is shipped with PMF.
Customer is asking for an extra option on the report. When accessing the drilldown option they do not want to go only to the measure detail report. What they would like to see is the Prior and Current Actual and Targets,Variance and Trend columns to be carried down to the next level and so on.

If they are four levels in the hierarchy they want to see the same information prior and current time periods to continue. They are looking for a different option after the "Measure Details" drill menu item.

I am thinking this is a possible new feature request?
Is their something that can be done with a gadget?

I do not want to go into code and develop since I feel the development time would be quite long.

Opinions, please share.

Merci. John

You can get most of what the customer wants with no coding.

I was able to build this report in Analysis Designer, saved it, then used the parameter extraction tool to get the couple lines of code it took to make this run:

-*FOCEXEC: M_DET_PRI_V_CURR.FEX
-SET &TIME_RANGE='PRI_CUR';
-SET &INWH33=0;
-SET &RPT_FLDIN01='INDRCH_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT';
-SET &RPT_FLDIN02='VAL_ACTUAL';
-SET &RPT_FLDIN03='VAL_TARGET';
-SET &SORTACROSS='TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE';
-SET &REPORT_TITLE='Try this';
-SET &WFFMT='HTML';
-SET &THIS_FOCEXEC='PMF_RPT_TMPLT_MEAS_ACRDIM';
-INCLUDE PMF_RPT_TMPLT_MEAS_ACRDIM

You could add this to a private drilldown INCLUDE FOCEXEC that is only called from the Prior V. Current report. This would not be a lot of code at all.

But. What you don't get with the above is the prior v. current point to point variance and trend at each detail level. That is the hard part. To do so will require someone to code it.

Are they willing to wait for a future release to get this as a feature? And to wait for it? And to upgrade to get it - meaning getting a whole bunch of features besides? If so then it can be considered as a new feature.

If the customer wants it *now* in their *current* release it is by definition not a new feature but a customization and that means a consultant is coding it. It's their choice. It's probably not more than a day of work to get this done.

The dev guide can point the way to this. There are standard INCLUDE FOCEXECs you can use or clone that give you the point to point comparison capability (for measure level with Prior V. Current the INCLUDES are a_prevcurr1.fex, a_prevcurr2.fex, and a_prevcurr2_i2.fex).

And possibly we could sweeten the pot by taking the code production and QAing it? That would virtually be like getting the feature fast, and then being sure it would be supported in the future.

One thing we do plan in the future is making choice of variance + trend a field selection in Analysis Designer. But that won't be done until sometime next year most probably.

Hope this gets things on the path...

I have a lot of information to go back to my client with. Thanx. This helps a lot.

Something I missed to add - this change is considered a nice to have meaning no it would not need to be done now in the current release

Merci, John

This message has been edited. Last edited by: malapejohn,

I think this would be a new feature request for us. There might be other clients that would find this useful as well. And that is to be able to keep the view of Prior vs Current or Preveious vs. Current along with the trend arrows, variance, etc. as you drill down on the measure. This option would be very useful to us.

We are planning to do it in the 5.2 series but not in 5.2.1. Some time in 2010.

thanks