You can integrate all your TM1 data with Microsoft Excel and use it in graphs etc. You do this by using TM1 Perspective. It’s an excel add-in which helps you get connected to your TM1 application server. Follow below steps:

Attend Start > All Programs > IBM Cognos > Perspective for MS Excel (if you’re using Windows 7, find out how you’re going to open this path, may be just search for Perspective)
MS Excel will open and will ask you to enable macros. Enabling macro will launch IBM’s TM1 perspective with Excel.
Attend TM1 menu bar, then click Connect and login to your TM1 admin server. You’ll receive a message saying thamay t you’re now connected. Click OK. Now let’s learn how you can get the data from cubes into MS Excel.

From TM1, you can bring the data into MS Excel using 3 methods:

1. Slice

Slice lets you update TM1 cubes’ data directly from MS Excel. It’s created using DBRW formulae and retains a real time interaction with TM1 cubes. If you update any data in a slice, the same data is written back to corresponding TM1 cube.

To check this functionality, click on Explorer on your tm1 menu bar. Browse to your Products2 cube and launch the default view. Cube view opens. From File menu click on Slice. This will create a data slice in excel.

Check different cells of excel and notice the formula which has been used. Now change quantity value of Jan from 10 to 12 (if you have any other cube, change the value of some input cell. but remember, that cell must not be calculated cell) and press enter.

Now attend the TM1 cube and check the value of that cell. The value has been changed to 12.

Advantages:

Using slices you can create input screens for users who don’t have access to architect or are not very familiar of TM1 cubes and related concepts. They can enter data directly in excel without bothering about cubes etc.
To update data, you don’t need to install TM1 Architect. You can get your work done by just using TM1 perspective

Disadvantage:

To use the cube data that you’ve brought into the slice, you need to keep yourself connected to TM1 server. Once you get disconnected from the server, the excel sheet looses the data.
If new items are added to the rows or column dimensions (such as new products etc.), slices will not automatically get those items. You’ll have to either manually add them to your slice, or create a new slice.

2. Snapshot

Snapshots also brings TM1 cubes’ data into MS excel but do not have real time update capability. Snapshots just bring the data values (no formula).

Advantage:

They are useful if you want to do some analysis on your cube’s data and don’t need the unnecessary TM1 formulae (you just need the data).
You don’t need to stay connected to the TM1 server to use values.
Lighter and faster than TM1 slices (as snapshots don’t have write back functionality, they are faster and excel files that’s built using them are lighter)

Disadvantage:

No write back functionality. You can’t update cube data using a snapshot
While you’re doing your analysis using snapshot data, if someone changes the data on TM1 server, you’d not receive the new data and will end up with incorrect analysis.

3. Active form

Active Forms, like TM1 Slices, let you view and update live TM1 cube data directly in MS Excel. Active Forms retain the ability to expand and collapse row dimensions in TM1 views. That means

Advantages:

Active forms have all advantages of slices.
If you add new dimension items to your dimensions, active forms reflect those changes too provided that you had created your cube views using dynamic subsets.
They also have formatting unlike slices.
Active forms have suppress rows functionality. So based on data, they can increase rows and show only non-zero relevant data. Slices don’t have this feature. If data is zero in all rows, slices will still show those rows.
You can filter the data too in active forms. So, if you want to top 5 performing products, you can see them using active forms.

Disadvantages:

They have all above disadvantages of slices.

For further information on active forms, follow IBM documentation:

IBM Documentation

Assignment

Create slice, active form and snapshot on a single worksheet of MS Excel and verify the data.

So, this brings us to the end of blog. This Tecklearn ‘Introduction to Cognos TM1 Perspective’ blog helps you with commonly asked questions if you are looking out for a job in Cognos TM1. If you wish to learn Cognos TM1 and build a career in Business Intelligence domain, then check out our interactive, Cognos TM1 Training, that comes with 24*7 support to guide you throughout your learning period. Please find the link for course details:

https://www.tecklearn.com/course/cognos-tm1/

Cognos TM1 Training

About the Course

Tecklearn’s Cognos TM1 training will make you proficient in building and configuring models in Cognos TM1 using performance modeler tool. Some of the topics included in this Cognos TM1 training are creation and configuration of TM1 servers, building Cubes and Views, creating dimensions, deploying Turbo Integrator for loading and maintaining data and transferring data using scripts. etc., in working with real-time projects, and this will enable you to become a certified Cognos TM1 developer.

Why Should you take Cognos TM1 Training?

The Average salary for a Cognos TM1 Developer is $117,816 per annum – ZipRecruiter.com.
Cognos TM1 has a market share of about 11.87%.
Solution that is owned by Financial and Business analysts, with limited IT involvement, but consistent with IT’s governance.

Curriculum

Introduction to Cognos TM1

Concepts of Multi-dimensional OLAP database
Cognos TM1 Installation
TM1 Servers and Services
TM1 Workflow
TM1 User Interfaces
Turbo Integrator

Cognos TM1 Configuration

Managing TM1 Components and Tasks
Operations on TM1 Servers: Start, Stop and adding TM1 Servers
TM1 Web, Applications and Operations Console
Using Command prompt create or delete Desktop/Windows services
Hands On

Creating Dimensions

Manual creation of Dimensions
Create Product Dimensions and Measure Dimensions
Dynamic Subset Creation
Sparse and Dense Dimensions
Using Turbo Integrator ETL create cubes, review Cubes and Dimensions
Create Subset, assign Subset, Dimensional Manipulation
Performance Monitoring
Control Cubes
TM1 Web and Rules in TM1
Cube related attributes, dimension related attributes
Hands On

Building Cubes and Views

Building Cubes
Building Views
Bulk Load Mode
Creating Data Source through TM1 Turbo Integrator
Hands On

TM1 Security

Various security levels including Server level, Cube level, Dimension level
Concepts of Security in TM1
Creation of Client & Group and access privileges
Cube Level Security
Hands On

TM1 Data Spreading

TM1 Data Spreading and Recreating dimension
Attributes element types
Cube control elements
Dimension elements
Drill Assignment rules
Trace a feeder and feed strings
Hands On

Cognos TM1 Rules

Understanding TM1 rules
TM1 Rules Editor and Rules compilation using functions
Rule performance optimization
Element information rules functions
Cube manipulation Turbo Integrator functions
D-type in TM1
ELCOMP & ELISCOMP Functions
ELISPAR & ELWEIGHT Functions
Hands On

Advanced Scripting with Turbo Integrator

Advanced Scripting with Turbo Integrator
Deploying Dimension subsets and attributes
Editing procedures using scripts
Hands On

Advanced Modelling Techniques

Significance of advanced modelling
Manually adding objects to application design
Understanding application views, dimensions and hierarchy
Virtual cubes, Lookup cubes and spread profile cube
Hands On

TM1 Application Web

TM1 Web Applications
Creating TM1 Application
Working with TM1 Application Web
Snapshots in TM1 application
Adding MDX filters and Action button properties
Active forms, TM1 user and data formatting range
Hands On

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