Previously, business rule security was discussed in coordination with menu options in the blog, “Oracle Hyperion Right-Click Business Rule Security”. As mentioned in that article, there are some potential issues with only using Business Rule Security to control the use of menu options for planners in Oracle Hyperion Planning. Below, I’ll overview a possible alternative to control the execution of these rules, without having to change Business Rule Security or attached menu items.
This brings us to Run-Time Prompt (RTP) security to limit member selection. Recently, Oracle added a nice feature to leverage dimensional security into business rules that seems to go relatively unused. As you will see from the image below, there are four options available: Use Default, Read, Write, and Approvals.
When RTPs are initially created, they are assigned the “Use Default” option. This will simply show all members in a prompt that a user has read or write access. The major two possible changes here are the ability to change the member selection to be “Approvals” or “Write”. By using these options, business rules will use the same status of security and approvals used throughout the application. For example, if a user attempts to run a rule that requires “Write” access to the budget, they will receive an error when attempting to run the rule when the administrator takes write access away at the end of the cycle.
By using this component, security can be much more dynamic. There has always been a disconnect between data entry and right-click menus. By allowing security to be used by both business rules and data entry, there is less of a chance for administrators to forget to perform all the necessary post-cycle steps. Additionally, it makes opening and closing the cycle to go much more smoothly and quickly.
There will be pros and cons to using this method versus the other options that were discussed in the previous blog, “Oracle Hyperion Right-Click Business Rule Security”. A quick analysis can be done to decide which path is the correct one for you.
Author: Tyler Feddersen, Performance Architects