backup user input

[philelmousse]

Hello,

As I understand Cognos Planning, if we modify a member of a D-List like an account name we can lose all data inputed by the users under that line.
Is there a way to backup that ?

Thanks

[ericlfg]

Hey,

If you modify the item in analyst Manually, that is you double click on the line and change the text of that item, it shouldn't affect the data already submitted out in the contributor application.  If you use an automatic method (such as an update link), it will 'delete' the item and then add it back in with the updated name.  It doesn't know that it's the same item, just with a different name.

You can usually tell if there's going to be a problem with the contributor data when you perform the sync and if it indicates that it'll be destructive.

As for backing up the data, you could build a staging application (built off the same analyst library) and use an admin link to move the current dataset over to it.  Then, you would update your analyst library and synchronize the application you intend to update (not the staging app).  Then, once the sync goes through (assuming it was destructive), you can build another admin link to move the data back from the staging application (you would have to manually map the source and target sides inside the admin link since the automatic matching would require the names be identical).

There may be other, easier ways, but this is my go-to.

[philelmousse]

Thanks for your answer.

Usually our d-list are linked to sql server table/view and I update them by Analyst -> D-List -> Update.

I'm very new in Planning and that's the previous employee who told me that when we're doing that all data inputed after the modified row are delete. Because Planning identify a row with a code + the description.

[lav4you]

Hi philelmousse,

I don't know the exact application structure and constraint but I don't think it's not a right approach.
Dimensions like these becomes very difficult to maintain if you include descriptions in its item name.

However if you are using Cognos Contributor as a frontend then you can have a work around for this.
I suggest you to backup application carefully and recreate you account dimension using only account code.(To be extra careful you can manually edit account dimension in Analyst and keep only account code, this will save you time and efforts in data transfer and will be more secure)


And create a new translation for this dimension in contributor.
Add account name + description as a translation (you can automate this upload using macro).
Now assign this translation to all users.

Hope this will be helpful.

Regards,
Jitesh H.V. Parmar