Lawson Certification of Essbase

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Vicki
Basic Member
Posts: 10
Basic Member
    We are finally upgrading Essbase from Version 7 to Version 11 and have been told by Oracle that Lawson has only certified to Essbase version 9.3. We are using Lawson Analytic Architecture to feed our cubes and it is working well for us. Has anyone else using Analytic Architecture upgraded to Essbase Version 11 and if so, are you having any issues? Have you ignored the lack of certification?
    blong
    Advanced Member
    Posts: 21
    Advanced Member
      Yep, Lawsons compatibility matrix indicates that Essbase is only certified up to version 9. We're looking into upgrading Essbase from 6.5.4 and would like to be as current as possible so I'm interested in this post as well.

      We are upgrading workstations to Win7 and Office 2010 so our Essbase add-in's for Excel will not install properly. Have to run an older version of Excel for now to use the Essbase add-in's for Excel.
      Vicki
      Basic Member
      Posts: 10
      Basic Member
        How are you doing with this? We upgraded to Essbase V11 and it is 10x more complex to implement. To replace the API, we are ftp'ing the IA120 file to the Windows server and using .bat and .mxl files to load it into Essbase. Not pretty.
        blong
        Advanced Member
        Posts: 21
        Advanced Member
          I was afraid of that. :cry:

          We currently have consultants that are setting up our new Hyperion 11 environment. They haven't informed me of how they plan to pull the data from Lawson for schema and data loading. We're under the impression that we will not be utilizing Analytic Architect. I'm not so sure about that. :unsure:

          Were you able to retain the same structure so your Excel/Essbase templates continued to work for you or did you have to modify them?
          Vicki
          Basic Member
          Posts: 10
          Basic Member
            I don't think the structure changed except to enhance for our use. We were able to put all ratios/metrics in Essbase reducing the need for calculations. We took advantage of the "drillable" functionality. Took advantage of positive numbers vs. debits and credits for reporting. Were able to add history to the production cube rather than a separate history cube. We added new dimensions, so retrieval spreadsheets needed to be modified due to that. We did not go live with SmartView since we did not have time to train. Security was much more complex so be sure to get training. We package our desktop installs and addins were a bear to package. Might be able to give you helpful hints here.
            blong
            Advanced Member
            Posts: 21
            Advanced Member
              Our users are primarily Add-in users and we use Hyperion Reports for period close reporting of P&L's and Revenue/Expense reports. All read-only so hopefully security won't be much of an issue. Think I'm really going to miss having the cube rebuild automatically with an IA120 job . When you say drillable functionality, are you drilling back into the Lawson DB?
              Vicki
              Basic Member
              Posts: 10
              Basic Member
                Not having the automatic rebuild is horrible! That is the intention of our drilling, but we have not tried it yet.
                brooke
                Posts: 21
                  We are on 9.0.1.10 and upgrading essbase to 11 - was anyone able to get the lawson api to work with 11 for the IA120 to still work?
                  blong
                  Advanced Member
                  Posts: 21
                  Advanced Member
                    We upgraded to Essbase 11. Still using Hyperion Reports for monthly P&Ls and the Essbase add-ins for Excel. We did not renew our Lawson Analytics so we no longer utilize the IA120 job. I wrote scripts to pull the organization and accounts dimensions as well as the account balance data from glamounts. We refresh dimensions and data hourly with load rules. Our Hyperion consultants who did the upgrade of Hyperion wrote the load rules. New accounts import into the outline but I sometimes have to manually sort at the lowest level to get them to appear in order of account number when drilling with the add-in.
                    brooke
                    Posts: 21
                      We were able to get the IA120 to work with Essbase 11 and 9.0.1.10. Has anyone else? Is there there any reason we shouldn't go this route?
                      brooke
                      Posts: 21
                        Vicki

                        Which consulting company did you use?

                        thanks!
                        brooke
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