Author: Ben Snawder, Performance Architects
Making changes to a single data form in Oracle Hyperion Workspace (Workspace) is easy. When you have to make changes to ten data forms, the process starts to become tedious. What if you need to make changes to fifty or even one hundred data forms? That’s essentially torture, especially if you’re using version 11.1.1.3.0 of Oracle Hyperion Planning or earlier.
To make this process easier, the FormDefUtil utility allows you to export data forms to XML files and to make changes in a text editor (NotePad++ is recommended). In this way, you can update any number of data forms and then import them back into your application in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually in Workspace.
Let’s look at a simple example:
In the data form below, we have three months of actuals and eleven months of forecasting. Let’s say you want to expand this form to forecast 12 additional months. Instead of editing the form manually to add these columns, you can export the data form into an XML file using the FormDefUtil utility, make the changes you need and import this back into Planning.
For most people, the FormDefUtil utility is located, along with other Planning utilities, in D:\Hyperion\products\planning\bin.
In order to launch the FormDefUtil utility, open up the command prompt and change directory to the folder where the utility is located.
Entering “FormDefUtil.cmd ?” will provide you with the syntax needed to run the utility.
[-f:passwordFile] can used if you have an encrypted password file set up. If you have one, enter the full file path and name in place of “passwordFile”. If you don’t have one, skip it.
After indicating whether you want to import or export, you can specify the name of the form of interest, or you can export all data forms in the applications.
Once you provide the server, username and application name, it will prompt you for your password.
After the utility runs, the XML file will appear in the same folder where the FormDefUtil utility is located.
Data forms in their XML state can seem unintelligible at first glance. After taking some time to notice the patterns, it becomes easy to see where columns and rows are being encoded:
A new column can be made by simply copying a column, pasting it after the last column in the form changing the substitution variables for the year and month accordingly:
This process can be repeated until you have the number of new columns that you need:
Now when you run the FormDefUtil utility again, this time choosing to import, the data form will reflect the changes that were made:
This utility comes in extremely handy if, for example, you need to add an additional year of forecasting to all 150 data forms in a Planning application.
Using this method you can create the new columns in one form, copy/paste them into all the others, import them back into Planning and be done within minutes rather than hours.