5. Status Visual

The Aimplan Status Visual as well as the Aimplan Comment Visual are the newest additions to the Aimplan solution. They are separate visuals, but as they work in similar ways and could be useful together, we go through them in the same exercise, starting with the Status Visual.

To set up the Aimplan Status visual is an easy task that should not take long to do. However, the thought process of defining what the actual process should look like and what user roles should be able to do what is a tricky and timeconsuming task. This is of course the case no matter your tool, but should be mentioned as this training focuses solely on the technical set up. You can read more about good things to think about when setting up the Status Visual here. There you can also read more about how to set up the Processes, SubProcesses and StatusTables in the Portal that are needed in order to start working with the visual. These are already prepared in the Training.

To begin this exercise, you need to add the Aimplan Status Visual to your report from AppSource.

When you have added the visual, you can create a new page in your report and call it 5. Status and Comment. Add the Aimplan Status Visual to the new page.

You have to add a field before you can do anything with the visual. You could start by adding SubProcessKey from DimProcess and ScenarioKey from DimScenario as these are mandatory fields in the visual. Once you have done this, you will be forced to chose your instance to be able to alter the visual. Choose Aimplan Training. Apart from SubProcessKey and ScenarioKey, a status measure is necessary to start working with the visual. You can simply drag the value Value from FactStatusTable to work as this. In this case, we have an extra key value in our storage table FactStatusTable, CostCenterKey. Therefore, this too needs to be added to the visual as a Key Field. These Key Fields are chosen to be included in the Status Fact table due to the following reasons:



Once you do this, the active statuses for this process will appear.

To be able to choose a status value in the visual, you need to have one distinct value for SubProcessKey and for ScenarioKey. Your ScenarioKey should be used as in your other reports, as a normal slicer. As for your SubProcessKey, this can be viewed as the key for the page that you are working on.

Imagine that this status visual will be used together with the Planning Report for OPEX that we set up in exercise 2, then we would want this status to create a lock measure that would work for that specific report. In this case, SubProcessKey 1 represent OPEX in our DimProcess table, meaning we will set a page filter that filters out only SubProcessKey 1 for everything on this page as all refers to OPEX. You could of course set it as a slicer if you prefer, but as this page is OPEX, there really is no need for the end user to choose.











As your status table will be empty when you start working with it, you need to right click on the key fields and show items with no data.

You can alter the appearance of each status value in Edit mode (the three dots in the upper right corner). Try it out and read more about it here.

In the Training file, we have prepared a few lock measures, based on the values from the Data Input Table you sat up in exercise 4. Add them to the Lock Measure field and implement them on their respective status value (0 is "Open", 1 is "Ready for Approval", 2 is "Approved by Manager" and 3 is "Final Approval")

By choosing a status, you generate a value to specific keys that is stored in your FactStatusTable. You can now use this value to create lock measures in your planning tables as they are related to the same dimensions . If you copy the Aimplan Planning and Reporting Visual from page 2.2 Planning Table and paste it on the page you are currently working on, you can now tie these two together.

As before, your measures are already created, you simply have to add the measure ReportLockMeasureOpex to the value field in the planning visual.

In this case, we have also added CostCenterName as a field in the visual to generate a third, higher level in the row section. Add these, then enter Edit mode in the report by clicking the three dots and choosing Edit.

Add CostCenterName as the highest level in your row section by dragging it to the top of Fields.

Next, go to your column section named Year - Month. When you click on you editable value, PlanAmount, and open the Editable-pane, you can choose ReportLockMeasureOPEX as this values Locked Indicator. Do the same for Comment and Done.

You have now connected your planned values report to your status visual, locking inputs in the planning table when the status for that subprocess is not "Open".