System Hub

Administrators use System Hub to manage various tracking and security features in FP&A Plus.

System Hub is organized as follows:

Open System Hub

  • Click the logo at the top-left corner and select System Hub.

Object History

Object History tracks all manual changes made to an "object", recording the who, what, and when of each change.

What is an object?

Generally, it's anything that you can work on in FP&A Plus through one of the modules. For example, in Security Manager, the objects are users, groups, and roles.

 Note:   At this time Object History contains the Security Manager node. The scope of Object History will expand with future releases.

See the history for an object type

  1. Open System Hub.
  2. In the Auditing drawer, open the Object History node.
  3. Open the sub-node that contains the object type (for example, Security Manager).

  4. Select the object type (for example, Users, Groups, or Roles).

    The change history appears in the main panel.

  5. To force an update, click Refresh.

  6. Optionally, you can sort and filter on the columns.

Compare two versions of an object

  1. Select two rows that belong to the same object. (To select non-adjacent rows, use Ctrl + click.)

     Tip:  Rows that belong to the same object always have the same ID value.

  2. Click .

    The Object Comparison dialog opens:

    • The left pane shows the older version, the right shows the newer.
    • Deletions appear struck out in the left pane.
    • Additions appear in green in the right pane.

Audit Log

The Audit Log tracks user actions in core areas, recording who did what and when and with what resources. If a problem occurs, Admins can use these detailed records to review events and thus more quickly identify solutions.

Additionally, Admins can download the log to an Excel file to help Prophix Support to analyze the problem.

The Audit Log data

The event data presented in the Audit Log grid is as follows:

  • Area: The module where the event took place.

    Audit Log tracks activity in the following Areas: Ad Hoc Analysis, Model Manager, Process Manager, Detailed Planning Manager, Template Studio, and Template Runtime.

  • Category: A sub-area, object, or function belonging to the Area.

    For example: Member within Model Manager, Import and Infoflex within Process Manager, Template within Template Runtime, Administration in Detailed Planning Manager.

  • Resources: The name of the affected object or its location.

    For example: Finance Model, DPM, Public\Templates\Personnel, Finance Model > Accounts > (Ast) Asset.

  • Event: The action the user took.

    For example: Create Template, Add Schedule, Attempt To Open Template, and so on,

  • User: The name and email of the user who took the action.
  • Date: The date and time of the event.

  • Message: A longer and more specific description for the Event.

    For example: If Event is Template Open, Message might be "Revenue Variance Report" was opened.

 Tip:  To see all the options for Area, Category, or Event, click for that column; a complete list of options appears under Filter by.

Use Audit Log

  1. Open System Hub.
  2. In the Auditing drawer, select Audit Log.
  3. Do any of the following:

    • For columns that allow sorting, click and select a sort option.

      (The default sort order is on Date, descending.)

    • For columns that allow filtering, click and select the Filter by options you want to include.

      • To filter on the Resources column, in Filter by type some text that you know appears in the Resources cells.

       Tip:  You can filter on more than one column at a time.

    • To turn off a filter, click and click Clear.
    • To turn off all filters, click Reset.
    • To refresh the data, in the toolbar click .
    • For cells with truncated content, to open the content in a popup click .

    • To download the current data set to an Excel spreadsheet, in the toolbar click .

      The download starts and the file name appears at the bottom left corner of your browser and you can open the file or open its location.

       Note:  The maximum download size is 10,000 records.

       Tip:  To make analysis easier, before downloading, apply filters to narrow the data set to the areas, categories, and so on that are relevant to the problem.

Data History

If turned on for a model, Data History tracks all manual changes made to a member combination through any of the following:

Turn on Data History for a model

  1. Open System Hub.
  2. In the Auditing drawer, select Data History.
  3. Select each model you want to monitor.

See a member combination's history

You can open a combination's data history in Ad Hoc Analysis or a template (in both data-entry and report modes).

  • Right-click the cell and select Data History.

See changes made through journal entries

In the data history, under Details, you can click a link that opens the relevant entry or entries in the Journal Entry dialog's Journal Details tab.

To learn more, see Journal Audit History.

Data History FAQ

What does Data History record?

Basically, the who, what, and when of all manual changes to a combination.

How long is a data history kept? 

If you delete the model, the history is automatically deleted as well.

Is Data History enabled by default?

An admin must turn on Data History for a model.

System Locks

Administrators use the System Locks to manage locking in FP&A.

Any software system that is shared among concurrent users employs locking to ensure that only one user at a time can make changes in a given area.

Open System Locks

  1. Open System Hub.

  2. In the System Usage drawer, select System Locks.

     Tip:  You can sort on any column. Also, if the tab has been open for some time, you can refresh the data by clicking .

Release a single lock

  • Select the row and click Clear Lock.

Release all the locks belonging to one user

  • Select any row belonging to the user and click Clear All Locks For User.

Release all locks

  • Click Clear All Locks.

     Note:  In certain situations where a user has caused a self-lockout, FP&A presents the user with the opportunity to take over the lock.

Active Model Queries

Global Administrators can use Active Model Queries to monitor the duration of SSAS SQL Server Analysis Services. Also known as Analysis Services. Microsoft’s OLAP database service. SSAS is part of the SQL Server database product. queries. The panel shows all queries that have run for 30 seconds or longer. Details include who started each query, when it started, the current duration, and the script itself.

End a long-running SSAS query

A Global Administrator can terminate any query that is deemed to have run too long. The termination is recorded in the Error Log.

  1. Open System Hub..
  2. In the System Usage drawer, select Active Model Queries.
  3. Select the query.
  4. Click (Terminate Query).

View a query's script

A Global Administrator can examine a query's script and copy it.

  1. Select the query.

  2. In the Query column, click .

    The Query Details dialog opens.

  3. (Optional) Click Copy.

Error Log

Admins use the Error Log to monitor the system errors that users encounter.

To use the Error Log

  1. Open System Hub.
  2. In the System Usage drawer, select Error Log.
  3. You can do any of the following:
    • To sort/filter on any column, click .
    • To turn off a filter, click Reset.

    • To save the log data to an Excel file, click . (You can save up to 10,000 rows.)

      The resulting file is Error Log Details.xlsx.

  4. To see the details of an error, click .
  5. To copy the details text to the clipboard, click Copy.

Data Precision

Global Administrators can activate and specify the Data Precision setting, which applies to all numeric data in FP&A Plus, affecting all models, accounts, and users.

By default Data Precision is turned off.

To use Data Precision

  1. Open System Hub.
  2. In the menubar, click System Settings.
  3. In the Data Precision tab, turn on Round model data.
  4. Set the value you want in Number of decimal places to round values to.

  5. Click Save.

     Note:  The new rounding value immediately takes effect on all model queries.

When to use the Data Precision option

You should only turn on Data Precision if you are experiencing problems with inexact data values.

 Example:  A member combination that you expect to return a value of 23.18 instead returns a value such as 23.180000000001 or 23.17999999997. Setting Number of decimal places to round values to at 2 returns 23.18.

The default settings

  • The default setting for Round model data is off.
  • The default value for rounding is 2 (We believe this setting will work best for most customers). The range is from 0 to 10.

How to choose a custom setting

If you need to use a custom value for Data Precision, you can determine the maximum rounding value as follows:

  1. Estimate the largest number you expect a model to return, and count the places to the left of the decimal.
  2. Deduct the number of places from 14; this gives your maximum rounding value.

 Example:  If the largest value you expect a model to contain is 9.99 billion (9,990,000,000), the number of places is 10 and your maximum rounding value can be 4 (14 - 10 = 4).

 Example:  If the largest value you expect a model to contain is 999 billion (999,000,000,000), the number of places is 12 and your maximum rounding value can be 2 (14 - 12 = 2).

Why the Data Precision option is needed

To better understand why some users may need to enable the Data Precision option, it is necessary to understand two concepts: significant digits and data precision.

What significant digits are

The term significant digits refers to all non-zero digits in a value (but includes any zeroes located between non-zero digits).

 Note:  Both integers and decimals count as significant digits.

 Example:  The value 1234567890.7654321 contains 17 significant digits, seven of which follow the decimal.

What double precision is

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) stores data values as double precision. This means that the values are accurate to the first 14 significant digits. However, not all possible double precision values can be 100% accurately represented in Binary. As a result, it is possible for a value such as 23.18 to be returned as a very close approximation, but slightly different after the 14th significant digit.

Significant digits and double precision

 Caution:  The main thing to understand is that there is no situation where more than 14 significant digits can be stored and reported accurately. The Data Precision setting you choose is always be applied to all model values, and that means you need to understand the size of the largest value in your model.

If we store a value of 14 or fewer significant digits as double precision, there is no problem. The value remains accurate.

If we store a value of more than 14 significant digits as double precision, the extra digits essentially become random numbers, and inaccuracies are introduced. This normally happens for a database value that is the result of calculations or aggregations.

 Example:  If we store 1234567890.7654321 (17 significant digits) using double precision, it will only be accurate to a value of 1234567890.7654; in effect, we are not storing the original value.

 Example:  If we store 123456.7890765 (13 significant digits) using double precision, it will remain accurate, even though it contains as many decimals as the previous example.

Effect on reporting

This slight inaccuracy of stored values usually doesn’t cause any problems and is in fact normally invisible in financial reports that have any type of numeric formatting applied (except General). The numeric formatting in the first example above will always return the expected value of 23.18 provided formatting is applied that doesn’t attempt to show more than 12 decimal places.

Where this issue may become evident is when a calculated value is expected to equal zero, but in fact ends up being a value that is near-zero (but not exactly equal to zero). For example, the value returned from the database is 0.0000000000004, and you have a report that uses the following options:

  • Display zero values as missing
  • Display missing data as – set to a user-defined symbol, for example a hyphen (-)

When the report tries to display the value, instead of the expected hyphen (-) you may see 0 or ((0) if the value is slightly negative).

How the Data Precision option solves the problem

If you choose to turn on Data Precision, every data value retrieved from a model is rounded to the value you specified in Number of decimal places to round values to before being passed to any modules such as Ad Hoc Analysis or data-entry/reporting templates.

Returning to the two preceding examples, the following table show the effect of two different rounding values:

Original value Rounding value Rounded result
1234567890.7654321 2 1234567890.771
123456.7890765 2 123456.791
1234567890.7654321 6 1234567890.7654xx2
123456.7890765 6 123456.7890773

1The rounding is accurate because it is performed on the first 14 or fewer significant digits.

2In this case the rounding is problematic; "xx" represents two random digits. If either of these digits is 0, neither will be shown. The "xx" digits were added back because the original value was 17 significant digits, the last three of which were lost when stored; we have specified 6 decimal places, but only 4 decimal digits are now available to fill them.

3The rounding is accurate because the original value was less than 14 significant digits.