Deep dive into the Arc TM1 Process Editor

Arc helps TM1 developers build higher quality IBM TM1 and Planning Analytics applications faster. It brings state of the art development interface to TM1 developers including modern IDE features.

This article delves into one of its most popular feature the Process Editor. The Arc Process Editor has many little gems that will make you write TI’s code way faster that you have ever done before:

• Code completion
• Get all your variables
• Create your own snippets
• Highlight variables and click through
• Drag & drop any process
• Shortcut keys

• Contextual snippets
• TextOutPut all variables
• Function picker
• Debugging
• Start a new process from a template
• Find/Replace across all tabs

On top of syntactical formatting, TM1 functions + some battle tested code are all available in one click, just hit CTRL+SPACE to access the list:

In the autocomplete drop-down, you will find all variables defined in your process. Once the code has been inserted, remember to press TAB to move to the next placeholder.

Arc gives you access to hundreds of battle-tested code. All these snippets are grouped by type to make it easier to navigate through the list. What is more is that you can easily add your own snippets.

In the Process Editor, hold down CTRL and hover over a variable to see its value. 

Hold down CTRL and click on a function name to drill to the target object. For example, an ExecuteProcess will open the process or ATTRS will open the Hierarchy editor:

From the menu, you can drag-n-drop any process into the Process Editor. Arc will fill-up the ExecuteProcess with all parameters:

Arc is full of keyboard shortcuts to boost your productivity such as:

• CTRL+F: Find
• CTRL+H: Replace in all tabs
• CTRL+/: Toggle comment
• CTRL+SHIFT+F: Fold Region
• CTRL+SHIFT+E: Execute process

The complete list of shortcut keys can be found here.

Some TM1 functions such as CellGetN and CellPutN will include cube names with all variables if they match the dimension names. The variables will be automatically added to the function at the right location.

The TextOutPut function writes a comma-delimited record to a text file. Arc makes it very easy for you to use this function. Just hit CTRL+SPACE, start typing text and then choose one of the following options:

• Parameters: Output all parameters
• Data Source Variable: Output all variables defined in the Data Source tab
• Inline variables: Output all variables defined in your code
• All variables: Output all variables
• Parameters and Variables: Output all parameters and all variables

An insert function button f(x) is available to help in selecting elements for all TM1 Cube-related functions (CellGetN, CellPutN…).

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.
• See the current value of each variable and create breakpoints to stop TI execution where you have an issue.
• In the Breakpoints tab, you can even create conditional breakpoints to stop just for a specific value (e.g. vEmployee @= ‘172841’)

Instead of starting from scratch each time you need a new process, Arc’s Process Editor includes a Save Template button to quickly create templates.

Once a template has been created, you will be able to select it when creating a new process. The new process created will contain all information from the one used to create the template:

Highlight any text then press CTRL+F to search or CTRL+H to replace and the Search/Replace pop-up will appear showing all occurrences across all tabs (Prolog, Metadata, Data and Epilog):

See in action how fast can you write a TI with the Arc Process Editor:

• How to create Hierarchies with TIs
• Debugging a TM1 process with Arc
• 5 hidden gems in Pulse that will change your life