Adding Items to Windows 7 Taskbar the hard way

Some programs/items are easy to be added to the Windows Taskbar for easy access – provided you see the “Pin To Taskbar” option on right-click. How about adding the item which does not have the option “Pin To Taskbar” when you right-click the item. You can add the item on the Taskbar the “hard way” so that you can access/open the program without having to browse through the file path.

In this example, I will show you how to add the EssbaseAdministration Console (EAS) desktop client to the Taskbar.

In the following illustration, we do not have “Pin To Taskbar” when we right-click the EAS icon. So I will go through the process of adding it to the Taskbar. We can do it with any other file in the same way.

I have this file ADMINICON.BAT on my desktop which is a shortcut of EAS. As I have mentioned above, there is no “Pin To Taskbar” option on right-click, nor can I “drag it to the Taskbar and drop it” – well this is another easy way of adding an item to a task bar.

What I can do now, however, is

• copy ADMINICON.BAT (Ctrl-C)
• Create a new folder with a descriptive name anywhere you would not happen to delete. In my example, I have created a folder named “eas_taskbar_shortcut” under the path “C:\Users\nshrestha\Desktop\nirmal”
• Paste the item you have copied (Ctrl-V) to the folder you just created.

Now, you should have ADMINICON.BAT file in your new folder.

• Right-click and COPY

• Right-click anywhere in a blank area within the folder (other than the ADMINICON.BAT file) -> New -> Shortcut

• The “Create Shortcut” pop-up window appears.
• Paste (Ctrl-V) in the space that says “Type the location of the item”

Important: Move the cursor all the way at the beginning of the path and type in “explorer and a space” so that it looks something like the one below:

Next
Type in a suitable name. In my case I have named it EAS_Shortcut.

Finish.

Right-click the brand-new item “EAS Shortcut” just created, and you will see the “Pin to Taskbar” option upon right-clicking it. You can also now see the “Pin to Start Menu” if you want to add it to the Start Menu. You can even drag the item to the task bar or Start Menu.

Essbase data load Rules file - how to create

In Essbase, we use rules to map data values to an Essbase database or map dimensions and members to Essbase outline. Rules are stored in rules files and have extension .RUL.

We use Rules Files to define which build method to use during dimension build, how to transform data values before loading them as the source file may not exactly be in the format Essbase understands, what to load and what to avoid loading, etc.

This is what the Rules Files branch would look like in EAS Enterprise View.

We can follow the following process to build Rules files to load data in Essbase. We can use Rules to build dimension as well. The process of creating Rules files to load data and build dimension are almost the same except for some differences in the process.

In the picture of EAS enterprise view illustrated above, we already see the Rules Files branch. In this case we can simply right-click on the “Rules Files” and -> “Create Rules File”

In case, it is the first time we are creating a Rules File or if we do not see the Rules Files branch in the Enterprise View, we can use the “File -> Editors -> Data Prep Editor” option to open up the Data Prep Editor.

This is what the Data Prep Editor looks like

File -> Open Data File

Open the data file that you want to load or a sample file that is a replication of the load file.

In this example, I have chosen a .TXT file named “sample_load_file.txt” that I have on my desktop.

This is what it looks like. The top section is RAW data whereas as the bottom section has everything in Field1. So, we will work on this file so that we can create a Rule that tells Essbase what and how to load the data.

One very important thing here in creating the Rules file is that if we look at the bottom section of the above illustration, we can see that Row1 is blank, and Row2 has the heading. Therefore, we want to tell Essbase to load data only starting Row3, and it can be achieved by skipping the first two lines during data load.

Click “Options -> Data Source Properties

Under Delimiter, choose the RADIO-BUTTON for Custom and enter the Pipe Symbol.

Click the “Header” tab.

Make sure “Number of lines to skip” is set to “2.” OK

This is what we will see now.

During the Rules file creation process, we can choose to “show” or “hide” the RAW data. So, this step is optional. If you want to hide RAW data – View -> Raw Data.

Since we are creating Rules file to load data, make sure to click the “Data Load Fields” icon.

Associate Outline: Options -> Associate Outline

Choose the outline with which the Rules is to be associated with.

Assigning Field Properties: This is where we define which field corresponds to what dimension.

Highlight Field1, and “Field -> Properties”

Click the “Data Load Properties” tab.

Double click “Versions” as the first column is “Versions” dimension. This is what it looks like.

Next -> “Scenarios”

Next -> “Center”

Follow this process to define the Fields.

When it comes to the fields that correspond to Jan, Feb, Mar, etc, we can expand the “Time Periods” dimension and choose the right members to correspond to the months.

After defining the last field, we can click OK to have those field properties set.

Now, Options -> Data Load Settings.

Under “Data Values” we can choose to “Overwrite existing values” or “Add to existing values” or “Subtract from existing values” – whatever we would like to do. In this case, we will choose the “Overwrite existing values” option. OK

Now, let us validate the Rule to ensure it does not have any error.

Options -> Validate

The follow pop-up notifies that there are no errors.

Now we can save the Rules file.

File -> Save

Essbase gives the option of saving the file either in the Essbase server or File System.

Make sure the .RUL files is not more than 8 letters long.

Save the .RUL file as per organization guidelines or whatever makes sense.

Now that we have created the data load RULES file, we can use this file each time we want to load similar type of data to the database.

To learn more about loading data to Essbase cube using Rules file, you can visit my blog about Essbase Data Load 
You can also visit Oracle's Rules files page to learn more about Rules Files. 

Migrate Substitution Variables

We can migrate substitution variables from one environment to another by using the EAS console. Say for example, that you want to copy substitution variables from Development to Production environment.

These are the steps that you can follow:

1         Log in to EAS.
2.       On the navigation panel, expand Enterprise View > Essbase Servers > Server_name (for example EssbaseCluster-1, or whatever server name you have).
3.       Right-click the Server > Edit > Variables.
4.       On the right, you will see a list of all the Substitution variables in the environment. You can see columns – Application, database, variable, Value.
5.       Choose the one(s) that you would like to migrate. You can make use or CTRL / SHFT key to make multiple selection.
6.       Click the “COPY” tab.
7.       A “Copy Substitution Variables” window pops open.
8.       Choose the following

a.       Under Essbase Server, choose the target Server from the drop-down.

b.      Under Application, choose application from the drop-down.

c.       Under Database, choose database from the drop-down.

d.      You can see check boxes under the “COPY” column.

e.      Check the ones that you want to COPY.

f.        Check the “Overwrite existing variables” check box if you want to overwrite the existing variables.

g.       Click OK.

h.      You are all set. Check and verify that the variables have migrated and are available in the target environment.

Cannot log in to EAS - Java related

If you are not able to launch the EAS console from your Workstation, these are some of the steps that you could follow. For example, when you try to launch EAS you might get a box that would tell you to save/open the file called EASCONSOLE.JNLP.

You can do a couple of things in this situation.

1. Make sure that you have the right version of Java installed.

2. Save the EASCONSOLE.JNLP file somewhere on your computer. Right-click the file and click OPEN WITH ->CHOOSE PROGRAM.

3. Browse and choose the javaws.exe file. The path in my case is C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin.

4. Check “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file”

5. Click OK.

6. Try to open your EAS console, and you should be able to log in now.

Also some other things to be noted.

1. Go to your control panel and open JAVA.

2. Click the JAVA tab and VIEW.

3. Make sure that the proper version is enabled.

Hyperion Business Rules Migration

Hyperion Business Rules Migration can be tricky. Even though, the Life Cycle Management (LCM) is considered the official migration tool in the EPM environment, migration of Business Rules has been an exception as far as version 11.1.2.1 is concerned.

However, Hyperion Business Rules can be migrated from one environment to another using the Essbase Administration Services (EAS) console. These are the steps you can follow in order to migrate Hyperion Business rules.

Log in to Essbase Administration Console (in the source environment)

In the Navigation window on the left, right-click Business Rules -> Export Business Rules.

Select the Business Rules that you want to export in this step. If exporting all the business rules, Select ALL.

After selecting the Business Rules, the DEPENDANTS tab becomes active. Click the Dependants tab if you want to export the dependants. In case it is the Calculation Manager Environment, check the "FOR CALC MGR" check box. Make sure the Variables are checked too as they need to be migrated as well. 

Click Export and you will be prompted for a file name and location where you can save the file. Business rules that we export are saved as .XML file.

So far, we have exported Business Rules from the target environment. Now we need to move the XML file that we have just created (saved during Business Rule export) to a folder of choice in the target environment.

If you are using EAS desktop or Web client from your workstation, you can simply save the exported XML file in your computer. Make sure you follow specific file naming convention to ensure what you are doing.

Important

One very important thing that we need to remember at this point of Business Rules Migration is that the exported XML file contains hard-coded names that point to the source environment. For example, if your target environment server name is KHOONKS, you will find this name hard-coded in the XML file. So, before you start importing the XML in the target environment, open the XML file with an editor and replace all the instances or names that point to the source with the ones that you have for target. It is a very important point. 

After you are sure that you have nothing pointing to the source environment, you can log on to EAS in the target environment. 

On the left in the navigation window, right-click Business Rules -> Import Business Rules

Here we will get the prompt to choose the XML file that we can import to the target environment. We can choose the name of the BR file and then hit OPEN.

On the next screen, we can hit OK to import the Business Rules.