Master defined Periods

Details of Issue
One of the major pieces of administration is the movement of defined date ranges at the end of fiscal years. As a lot of the reporting is looking at FYTD -1 month it becomes a massive undertaking on the 20+ databases we have. The documentation acknowledges this as an admin step, but it considers only a couple of databases that you would so this to, in reality it is much higher. Here is my use case:

My clients fiscal calendar is Sept - Aug so, when you come to year end we have this issue:

If todays date is August, the defined dates are:
Sept Most recent year (2020) - Offset -1 (July 2021) = Good

If todays date is Sept (star of new FY), the defined dates are:
Sept Most recent year (2021) - Offset -1(Aug 2021) = Bad as the date range is not inverted due to September moving.

If todays date is October, the defined dates are:
Sept Most recent year (2021) - Offset -1 (Sept 2021) = Good

This defined date range is in all our (20+) databases, this means at the end of the year, I have to redefine all the date ranges and then adjust again once I get to the second month of the new fiscal year. This is a huge undertaking, it took me 2 hours to go through all of these dates (have other defined dates such as PYTD - 1 Month), this then as a total level of admin work puts it around 6 hours as you need to inspect all databases (newly created and pre-existing) to check all databases conform to the new date ranges.

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I then need to do the same again in December to perform the CY versions.

Suggestion to reduce admin
I believe a solution to this is similar to Period types. This is what I am calling ā€œmaster defined periodsā€. This section is a singular admin screen which houses common defined periods you want across multiple database. This would become a one trick pony for defined periods in databases as each database references this singular defined period range. For example:


The above would reduce admin time from a total of 6 hours down to 6 minutes! Due to only having to code the date ranges once for ALL databases.

This was raised over a year ago but did not get much traction. I implore all admin users to like this post if you also have this overhead, so it is elevated for Phocas to develop. Happy to be shown a clever way around this, but from my experience nothing fits the bill with the same amount of control and date granularity than above.

For completion here is the prior post raised by @hakio .

5 Likes

I would like to take the concept of Master Defined Periods one step further by allowing a Master Defined Period for dashboards.

My organization prefers dashboards with KPIā€™s that pertain to the same defined period - like ā€˜Last Business Dayā€™, ā€˜Last Monthā€™, ā€˜YTDā€™, etc. As such, a version of the same dashboard has to be created to satisfy each preferred defined period. A Master would allow the user to change without going into each widget.

Hi @Mike,
Thanks for the up vote. Actually I raised this possibility of master dashboard filters a while ago as another product suggestion here: Dashboard master filters

Regards,

Jon

I recall seeing that post. If I havenā€™t already, Iā€™ll make sure to up vote it as well.

As a work-around for the master filter, each of my enterprise level dashboards have as series of table widgets using R12 Sales (using it as a generic measure) against a location dimension that allow the users to focus on their location. The down side is if the dashboard doesnā€™t fit on one screen, you loose visibility to the ā€œMaster Filterā€ widget as you scroll down the page. Also, you need several of these that take up a lot of real estate in the dashboard.

At this point, I have not been able to identify a work-around for a dashboard master defined period.

Hi @Mike,
I do exactly the same thing. I have the first line of the dashboard to be the ā€œcriteriaā€ section. This is where we have our most key filters that users will want to narrow results such as Country, Sales Rep, Brand, Etc. The remainder of the dashboard then will reflect these key choices.

Echoing your comments, this requires users to scroll up to the top to change the key filters and then scrolling down. I also provided suggestions on navigating a dashboard as well which would make it easier (although not perfect) here: Table of Contents (lines) on a dashboard

Also making scrolling easier here: Dashboard Group Of Lines

I have raised this with our account manager to see what can be done as these above two are IMO quick fixes for Phocas and improve quality of life considerably.

Regards,

Jon

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