Boost Your Workday Adaptive Planning Performance: Tips & Tricks

Planning models can get bloated over time, and that can impact their performance. That's where Configuration Metrics come in handy.

Think of Configuration Metrics as a dashboard for your planning model. It gives you a clear picture of what's going on behind the scenes and helps you identify potential bottlenecks. It's like a health check for your model, and with the right insights, you can keep things running smoothly.

What are Configuration Metrics?

Configuration Metrics help you monitor the size of your model and track changes over time. They also provide valuable insights into factors that could be affecting your model's performance. You'll see a neat KPI chart that highlights key elements of your model, such as:

• Versions: How many versions are you working with? Are some of them outdated and unused?
• Levels: Is your level hierarchy getting too complex? Are there any levels that you can simplify or eliminate?
• Dimensions: Are you using the right types of dimensions? Are there any unnecessary dimensions you can remove?
• Dimension Values: Are there any unused dimension values you can get rid of?
• Dimension Attributes: Do you have any attributes that are no longer needed?
• Sheets: Are there any sheets that you haven't used in a while?
• Snapshot Reports: Are there any reports that you can delete because they are no longer relevant?
• Shared Reports: Are there any shared reports that are no longer needed?
• Custom Accounts: Do you have any custom accounts that are redundant or unused?
• Cube Calculated Accounts: Can you combine accounts to simplify your model?
• Modeled Calculated Accounts: Are there any modeled accounts you can eliminate?
• Linked Accounts: Do you have any chained linked accounts that you can simplify?

Understanding the Charts

Each KPI on the Configuration Metrics page has a line graph that shows you how the value has changed over time. By default, you'll see the past 30 days, but you can customize the timeframe to view up to 90 days of data. The charts also display the current value of each element, so you can see if it's above our benchmarks for optimization.

What to Do When You See Orange

If any of your KPIs are highlighted in orange, it means you might want to take a closer look. Orange means that your current value is above our benchmarks for optimization. This doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem, but it's a good indication that you should investigate further.

Here's a breakdown of common actions you can take to improve performance based on the KPI:

Versions:

• Delete old and unused versions: No need to keep versions around that you're not using anymore! This will reduce the overall size of your model and make it run faster.
• Minimize the Left Scroll Limit for new plan versions: This helps to ensure that new versions don't inherit a lot of unnecessary data from previous versions.
• Turn off the audit trail before locking versions: This will reduce the amount of data that is stored in your version history, making it less likely that your model will become bloated over time.
• Enable Calculate Formula Values for the version: This helps to ensure that calculated values are preserved in your version, even if the underlying data changes.

Levels:

• Simplify the level hierarchy: Use level attributes instead of creating new levels wherever possible. This will make your model easier to understand and manage.
• Remove any concatenations: Concatenations can make your model complex and slow. If you can, try to avoid them.
• Make levels unavailable in versions or sheets: This will help to reduce the amount of data that is loaded when you are working with specific versions or sheets.
• Delete old and unused levels: No need to keep levels around that you're not using anymore!

Dimensions:

• Use list dimensions with attributes: List dimensions are generally faster and more efficient than hierarchical dimensions.
• Make unused dimensions unavailable in versions: This will help to reduce the amount of data that is loaded when you are working with specific versions.
• Remove dimensions that represent different granularities of the same data: This can lead to redundancy and make your model slower.

Dimension Values:

• Use dimension attributes: Like levels, using attributes instead of creating new dimension values will keep your model streamlined.
• Plan at a different level of granularity: This can sometimes be a good option if you have too many dimension values.
• Remove unused values: This is a simple way to reduce the size of your model.
• Group insignificant values together: This can help to make your model easier to understand and manage.

Dimension Attributes:

• Identify and delete unused attributes: Make sure you delete attributes that you no longer need to avoid any unnecessary bloat. Remember to resolve any dependencies before deleting them.

Sheets:

• Use Sheet Metrics: The Sheet Metrics tool can help you identify unused sheets that you can delete, as well as sheets that might be performing slowly.
• Remove sheets that display only locked cells: You can build reports with this data instead, which will be more efficient.

Snapshot Reports and Shared Reports:

• Use Report Metrics: The Report Metrics tool can help you identify unused reports that you can delete, as well as reports that are taking too long to load.
• Split larger reports: This can improve performance.
• Use filters or parameters: This can also improve performance.

Custom Accounts:

• Add data entry overrides for actuals versions: This helps to ensure that you have the most up-to-date data for your actuals versions.
• Identify and delete unused accounts: No need to keep accounts around that you're not using anymore.
• Consider if the custom account can exist on the General Ledger hierarchy or as a standard cube on a specific cube sheet: This might help to simplify your model.

Cube Calculated Accounts:

• Use data entry override for actuals versions: This helps to ensure that you have the most up-to-date data for your actuals versions.
• Combine accounts that hold actuals and plan data separately: This can simplify your model.
• Remove them from the sheet: You can still use reports to review the data, even if you remove them from the sheet.

Modeled Calculated Accounts:

• Review dependencies on accounts: Make sure that all your accounts are being used and remove any that are not.
• Minimize the accounts used to store calculations from other accounts: This can help to simplify your model.

Linked Accounts:

• Remove any chained linked accounts: This will make your model more efficient.

The Planning Center is your one-stop shop for managing your planning model. You can access the Configuration Metrics page by: