Best Practices for Hyperion Financial Reporting

Best Practices for Hyperion Financial Reporting (FR) Report Design (Doc ID 1196695.1) Abstract History Authors: Create Date: Details All Data Sources Estimating Report Size Essbase or Planning Data Sources HFM Data Sources Template Reports Safeguarding Reports Summary Purpose Scope

APPLIES TO: Hyperion BI+ - Version 9.0.0.0.00 and later Information in this document applies to any platform.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this document is to provide Best Practices for Financial Reporting Report design. It assumes that you are a report designer for Hyperion Financial Reporting, and are acquainted with Financial Reporting Studio and general Financial Reporting terminology.

HISTORY Authors: Sharon Morris Kathleen Hardin Create Date: September 1, 2010

DETAILS All Data Sources Choose the data source best-designed to meet your specific reporting need. 

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Data sources should be designed to meet the organizational reporting reporting requirements. There is a great deal of flexibility with Essbase cube design. There is somewhat less with HFM databases and Planning databases and cubes, since both of those data sources have fixed numbers and types of dimensions. Minimize the number of dimensions in the grid. Single-member dimensions should be in the Grid Point of View (POV) or the Report POV. To set a value in the Grid POV that users cannot change, take the following steps: 1. Click on the Grid Corner to highlight the grid.

2. In the Grid Properties pane, check "Grid Point of View". 3. In the Point of View display in the grid, make the desired selections. For the dimensions to be available to users, leave the value as "User Point of View". 4. Uncheck "Grid Point of View" in the Grid Properties pane.

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The dimensions for which you selected members will not be visible to users. You can use Text Functions to display the members in the hidden dimensions. Callouts Instead of expansions, use Related Content. o If you want to see detail from a high level in a report, you can use Related Content reports, which are related detail reports containing detail information for the member in the calling report. The related report will pull the point of view for the callout from the calling report. You can set up Related Content links in the Grid Properties pane, or in the Cell Properties pane. For example: Your primary report is a Cash Flow Statement. In the Uses of Cash section, you include Asset Purchases, which are an alternate rollup of Fixed Assets . You wish to drill down to individual asset purchases.

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In your associated detail report, POV dimensions will include Account. The row dimension selection will be "Current Point of View for Account and Bottom of Hierarchy for Account". The "Current Point of View for Account" is Asset Purchases, from the calling report. Minimize the number of row selections using "Descendants of". If you have more than two dimensions in the rows that are calling Descendants, you can quickly produce an excessively large data set that Financial reporting cannot manage, and your report will not run. You also run the risk of slowing performance at the data source if the data source needs to provide a very large number of intersections.

Instead of calling descendants for multiple dimensions into the grid, put one of the dimensions into the POV. You can put the report into a book, and make the selection in the Report POV in the book. The book will generate a separate report for each selection, pulling in many smaller data sets rather than one very large one. A report should not require more than 30 or 40 data rows to facilitate maintenance. o Similarly, columns should be kept to a manageable number. There is a limit of 256 columns in a report. There is no fixed limit to the number of rows. Most calculations should be done at the data source. o Basic suppression at the data source reduces the number of data intersections pulled into o the report. Always do Basic Suppression separately from Advanced Suppression. Estimating Report Size You can estimate the number of data intersections in a report using the following formula: 

(# of members in dimension1) * (# of members in dimension2) * (# of members in dimension3) ... * (number of data rows) * (number of data columns) Each dimension in the grid acts as multiplier, including dimensions in the rows, columns and o pages. You determine the number of members in a dimension by expanding the dimension until o you see the desired member. In a large dimension, you may access hundreds or thousands of members to pull one or a handful of members into the report. o

Dimensions in the POV do not act as multipliers. The members are pulled into the report only once.

The potential size of a report, before basic suppression, measured by the number of data intersections is as follows: Small Report: