How to Organize your TM1 Developments Tasks with Arc

One of the best parts of working as an IBM Planning Analytics (TM1) developer is that you’re an integral part of the business and you’re consistently interacting with other teams that are relying on the TM1 system to get their work done.  As a result, you’re often inundated with requests for various tasks and it can be challenging to keep your eye on everything.  If you get distracted from what you’re doing, how do you make sure that you can return to what you were doing previously?

You need a good system for managing your tasks, and that’s where Arc’s To-Do List can be so valuable.  This task management module will help you organize your development and keep track of all your open loops so that you never find yourself dropping the ball. 

When you need to create a new report for your users, you might have to:

• Create new dimensions;

• Create new processes to load a dimension;

• Create new cube(s);

• Create new processes to load the cube data; and

• Create calculation rules, amongst others.

This list can grow very quickly depending on your design – and it’s crucial that you have an efficient workflow to keep everything in line.  With Arc, you can organize these tasks into various lists that demarcate different parts of the process.  For example, you can create a Kanban board like you see below with a ‘To-Do’, ‘In Progress’, and ‘Complete’ section to manage all the various tasks you’re working on. 

Each time you migrate developments or data into production, there are several checks that you need to do.  Instead of using a Word document that is not really purpose-built for such a task, you can use the Arc To-Do List to organize your tasks as illustrated below.  This helps you segment tasks efficiently and add all the verifications that you need to complete in order to ensure that the migration is successful.

As a TM1 administrator, there are also a number of regular recurring tasks that form part of your normal day-to-day operations.  These could include things like loading last month’s actual data, updating settings for the cube, and a range of other things.  Arc helps you to organize all these tasks so you don’t forget the right order and the process that will make your life easier later in the month.  In addition, this makes it easy for your colleagues to follow if you’re on vacation or need to hand off the process to someone else.

The main benefit of using Arc is because you are already working in TM1 and the native integration makes things a lot easier.  As an example, you can select various objects like the dimension you need from your dimensions:

And when you are working with processes or chores, you can select them and run them straight from the To-Do list.

You can also set up a due date per card so you can effectively prioritize according to what is most urgent within the business. 

Arc’s To-Do list functionality brings IBM Planning Analytics (TM1) developers a new and innovative way to organize their tasks.  When used regularly, you’ll ensure that you never forget anything you need to do, you keep track of your progress, and you can quickly come back to what you were working on with the Arc To-Do List module.

The To-Do List module is available under Tools. if you can’t see it, go to the About page and check if the To-Do list plugin is enabled:

It’s time to get organized.  What are you waiting for?

• How Arc can supercharge your productivity

• Building Active Forms with Hierarchies

• How to make your TM1 system observable