Arc and Slice – Feature list by releases

This article gathers the most popular new features of Arc and Slice by releases.

Arc & Slice v4.1 – Validate your code against your best practices

A new button has been added to the rule and process editors to validate your code using Validation Rules from the Pulse Validation Report. This will give you pre-emptive visibility of potential issues. The predefined rules validate naming conventions of objects as well as common pitfalls in cube rules and Turbo Integrator processes.

Arc & Slice v4.0 – Pulse integration

Version 4 is a big milestone in the history of Arc and Slice.

You can now connect your Arc server to Pulse to unlock many new features in your Arc application, such as Instance/Server Monitoring, Full Model Search, Alerts and Change Tracking. We call this Pulse-powered mode “Arc+”.

Arc & Slice v3.5 – Rollup and MDX Lab

Arc supports now UDC (User Defined Consolidation) in the cube viewer. When looking at a cube view, you can select elements and create a virtual consolidation on rows, columns and titles. This consolidation is calculated on the fly. This roll-up can be created in the subset editor or directly from the cube view with the right-click menu:

Arc & Slice v3.4 – Code formater

Arc v3.4 includes many new exciting features such as:

• Easily apply standard practices with the code formater

• Expand Above in subsets and cube views

• Quickly see and clean your applications

• Easier to troubleshoot your MDX

• Export MDX Forms from a cube view

Arc & Slice v3.3 – MDX Forms

Slice v3.3 introduces a new way to build reports, it is called MDX Form. This report is driven by one MDX query bringing the following advantages:

• Easier to maintain because everything is driven by one MDX query

• Expand and collapse on rows and columns

• Create on the fly calculation by using calculated members in MDX

Arc & Slice v3.2 – PA Release History

A new Administration module was added, it is called Release History. This new module will help TM1 developers to track new releases of TM1Web, IBM Planning Analytics Server (PA Server), PAfE & PAW:

• View the full history of releases.

• Filter the list by products and export it into Excel.

• Quickly find the release notes.

Arc & Slice v3.1 – Data spreading & cell annotations

v3.1 introduced support for data spreading and cell annotations in the cube viewer. The search by wild card has been improved in the subset editor.

Arc & Slice v3.0 – Introducing Slice

Starting with Arc v3, you can now use Arc inside Excel. This new Excel add-in is called Slice.

Arc v2.4 – Server groups

Arc v2.4 introduces a new exciting feature targeted at environments that have many admin hosts and connections, it is called server groups. It is now possible to group multiple IBM Planning Analytics (TM1) admin hosts and connections together and toggle between the groups:

Arc v2.3 – Check Rule Syntax.

A new great addition to the Arc Rules Editor which will save you a lot of time, the Check Rule Syntax button. It is now possible to check the rules syntax before saving it (only available for PA v2.0.9.5):

What’s more in v2.3:

• It is now faster to create a new chore with the new Save As button. The new chore will be created with all the settings and processes from the selected chore.

• A new module has been added to Tools called ODBC Studio. It enables you to test SQL queries, preview the result and keep all queries in the browser’s cache.

• To make it quicker to paste your own selection, a new button Remove All elements has been added to the subset editor.

• The Arc Process Editor has been enhanced to improve the experience with support for freeze panes, copy/paste and search through the results in the data source tab.

Arc v2.2 – Support for attributes and localization.

v2.2.0 introduces a new tool facilitating the localization of your TM1 application, all the different steps such as updating }LocalizedDimensionAttribute and }LocalizedCubeAttribute values are gathered into one module:

What’s more in v2.2:

• The Arc cube viewer has been enhanced with two new features (Display the view processing time and a new button to cancel a view execution).

• A new module called Files to manage all blobs files from the TM1 data directory has been added. This can be used to upload a csv file to the TM1 data directory and then can be used as the data source of a TM1 process.

• From the Process Editor, an upload button has been added. The upload button will read the csv file, upload it into the TM1 data directory and then set it up as the new data source.

• From the Dimension Editor, it is now possible to create a new hierarchy by attribute from the context menu. Right-click on an attribute value then choose Create Hierarchy, you will then be able to choose between creating the hierarchy and/or creating the process:

Arc v2.1 – Layout Restore Mode

It is now possible to save the layout of your tabs. A new parameter, Layout Restore Mode has been added to the About page to switch between the different modes:

• Locked Only (default value): A tab will be locked only if the lock icon is active.

• All: All open tabs will be restored.

• None: No tabs will be restored.

What’s more in v2.1:

• Arc end-user features will now be free to such as the cube viewer, subset editor and execute a process or chore. All developer’s features such as process and rule editors will require a subscription that can be bought here.

• Support for sandboxes: it is now possible to create, merge and reset sandboxes from the cube viewer.

• MDX Parser in the cube viewer

Arc v2.0 – Arc Desktop for Windows

Arc is now available as a Desktop application (Windows only). The main advantage of Arc Desktop over Arc Server is being able to use multiple windows.

What’s more in v2.0:

• Number of performance improvements have been made to the cube viewer.

• New features are available thanks to the new right context click menus.

• From the Security page you can now impersonate a user to view how security is applied to them.

• When browsing the error logs, a new button has been added to open the process at the source of the error.

• Arc now supports native TM1 OpenID authentication.

Arc v1.11 – Security tool

The Security tool has been significantly improved with new features:

• Quickly find who has Admin access with the   flag.

• All user’s operations (changing password, editing properties…) have been 
  gathered into one Edit User button.

• The Audit user button opens one separate tab per user, to make it easier 
  to compare user security access.

• When creating a new user, you can clone one user’s security access.

• A new Audit tab to help you see possible issues in your TM1 security setup.

What’s more in v1.11:

• A To-Do-List tool to help you create list of tasks.

• A Default option has been added to the Save Subset and Save View pop-ups to quickly create the default subset or view.

• New setting instancestohide in the settings.yml file to hide specific instances.

• New settings rulenamingscript and processnamingscript to change the case of rules and processes functions and snippets.

Arc v1.10 – Private Views and Subsets

The Arc Cube Viewer supported already Native (normal TM1 views you have been using for decades) and MDX views (New format introduced with PAW), v1.10 introduced support for Private views and subsets.

What’s more in v1.10:

• A quick menu has been added to Views, Rules Editor, Dimension Editor and Subset Editor. It allows navigation between related objects.

• A label on the top banner has been added to highlight on which Arc server you are using. Text and color can be amended from the settings.yml file.

• A wizard to help you create a drill process has been added to the Create Cube window.

Arc v1.9 – Snapshot, Slice and Active Forms

Create a snapshot, a slice or an active form from any cube view by using the new Export button.

What’s more in v1.9:

• Arc’s layout has been redesigned to support Light and Dark themes.

• Drill through from a cube view to a view and ODBC data source.

• A Time management tool to create date dimensions (Day, Week, ISO Week, Month & Year) with just a few clicks:

• Arc supports Single Sign On with CAM security.

Arc v1.8 – Subset MDX Viewer

Subset expressions can be edited individually in the Subset MDX Viewer.

What’s more in v1.8:

• A new Undo button has been added to remove the last action in the Subset Editor.

• In the Process Editor, hold down CTRL and over hover a variable to see its value. Hold down CTRL and click on a function name to drill to the target object. For example, if you click on ExecuteProcess, Arc will open a new tab with the sub-process.

Arc v1.7 – Functions Picker

New rule area picker and insert function buttons have been added to the Rule Editor.

What’s more in v1.7:

• See default member for each hierarchy in the dimensions overview page

• Save a process as a template

Arc v1.6 – Hierarchy Editor

The Hierarchy Editor has been improved:

• The default hierarchy is marked with ‘*’.

• The all leaves hierarchy is marked with a “+”.

• A new button called Set as Default Hierarchy has been added to set a new Hierarchy as the new default hierarchy.

• A new button called Change Leaves Hierarchy has been added to replace the current Leaves hierarchy with an existing or new hierarchy.

Arc v1.5 – Configuration tool

A new administration tool called Configuration has been added. It enables you to update all tm1s.cfg settings for your TM1 servers.

What’s more in v1.5:

• Arc Console, you can now execute any TM1 process functions without having to create a TM1 process

• Arc supports now Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional)

Arc v1.4 – Rule Tracer

Rule Trace has been added to the cube viewer

What’s more in v1.4

• There is now a “time elapsed” counter when running a TI process.

• Arc supports now English, German, Spanish and French languages

Arc v1.3 – TM1 Applications

What’s more in v1.3:

• Arc is now available on different platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac).

• TM1 Applications folder are now supported

• The Cube Viewer has been improved

• The navigation pane has been improved

Arc v1.2 – Multi-window layout manager

Arc uses now a new multi-window layout manager (It can be to left/right, top/bottom or beside another tab).

Arc v1.1 – MDX Studio

Test your MDX queries and view the results in the MDX Studio.

What’s more in v1.1

• Support for Dynamic SQL Queries during Preview.

• Overwrite a cube if already existing.

• New plugin dedicated to the REST API.

• New plugin to help you manage native views and subsets.

Arc v1.0 – Advanced Search

The object search on the menu now allows you to filter by instance with i: prefix and object type with t: prefix. For Example, you can use employee t:dim i:tm1srv01 to find a dimension in the instance tm1srv01 containing Employee in the name.

Debugging your TM1 process has never been so easy with Arc. Step through your Turbo Integrator code line by line as it executes on the TM1 server.

• Debugging a Turbo Integrator process with Arc

• How to create a Hierarchy with a TI

• Continuous improvement of your TM1 systems