Scheduling the Execution of Business Rules with Hyperion Planning without Server Access

One of the nice evolutions of the on Premise version of Hyperion Planning because of Planning on the Cloud (PBCS) is that Oracle develops solutions for Planning admins to perform tasks from a web interface, without the need for a server access. It makes sense, as they don’t want consultants or admins to wander on their Exalytics servers.

It is a real benefit as I have seen many clients where IT does not want Hyperion Admins to have server access and it makes everything a lot more complicated when it comes to scheduling a job.

Step by Step Process: Opening the Console

Open your Planning Application with the Simplified Interface

Click on console then on the Agenda tab on the left

Select “Schedule Jobs”

The scheduling will happen in 3 steps:

General Information, Job Details, and Review.

Step by Step Process: Entering General Information

You first need to select the type of jobs you want to schedule, in our case; we want to schedule a Rule:

Then, you need to enter when you want to execute the job

Note that Oracle now having a very interactive interface where the system asks you questions and you answer it to build your solution.

You can select a specific date or select to run the job now (why did they create this feature?).

Next, you need to give a name to your job, as I like to live dangerously; I entered a name with spaces.

Then you need to specify the frequency of your job.

You can also enter an end date, if you don’t enter an end date, Planning will assume there is no end date. If you select “Run Once” an end date will be automatically entered for you (and you cannot edit it).

Once you are done, you should have something like that: you are then ready to click “Next”

Step by Step Process: Entering Job Details

Dear reader be careful, this step can be very confusing!

You can filter on Plan Types and Rule Types. What is a Rule Type? It can be a script, a Rules, or a RuleSet.

To select a Rule, click select, you will have two possibilities:

1. the rule has a Variable and you have an additional screen

after clicking on “Select” a popup opens to select the Version

2. The rule has no Run Time Prompt and nothing happens after you click on “Select”

Be careful: make sure you click on Select and not just highlight the Rule you want to select. You can select a rule and highlight another rule, the scheduler will take into account the selected rule and not the highlighted one, be very careful with it!

Once you are done, click Next to review your Scheduled Job:

Step by Step Process: Review Job

Make sure the Rule you select is correct, the schedule is correct and the End Time is ok, the Variable (if any) is ok too and then click Finish.

Your Job is now Pending:

Managing Jobs

After a few executions, the Recent Activity column will naturally populate:

When you click on a job, you can see the execution parameters if the Job is scheduled:

If you click on a Job on the right column (Recent Activity), you will se the details of the execution:

You can Delete an Executed Job or Delete a Pending Job.

Bottom Line

The Simplified Interface Console and Job Scheduler is a fantastic feature for any Hyperion Planning Administrator even if they don’t plan to use the Simplified Interface because it is possible to create a Rule with Calc Manager and schedule it from the Simplified Interface.