Streamlining writeback with XL3DoWriteback

We were recently asked by one of our customers to help them improve their forecasting process. They had originally been using a solution developed using XLCubed Excel Edition v6.0 and our XL3LookupRW formula. The system had been working, but because of a combination of the intricacy of the data model and the slowness of the cube server when performing a writeback, the process was taking much longer than necessary.

As an example, one of the workbooks that was being used contained nearly 7,000 XL3LookupRW formulae, and another contained over 1,000. Many of these lookups could actually have been replaced by a simple Excel formula, such as a sum or a product of other values, but built as it was, the customer was having to type these values into the cells individually: a tedious, time-consuming and error-prone task.

In the screenshot above, the price, percentage and production figures would be typed in, then a calculation made to calculate their product (in the white cells). This would then be individually copied and pasted into the corresponding cell in the revenue row.

What the customer wanted was a couple of changes to streamline the process:
* the ability to use Excel formulae in the workbook to obtain the final values – without the subsequent copying of values,
* they wanted to be able to get all the calculations lined up, then submit them all at once – this would make the poor server performance a much less important issue, since instead of having to wait to enter the next value, that period could be usefully spent doing other tasks.

What we offered was a different writeback method, which has been available in its current form since XLCubed v6.5: the XL3DoWriteback formula.

Unlike XL3LookupRW, XL3DoWriteback is geared towards the kind of batch writeback approach that the customer had envisioned. Once set up, Excel formulae can be used to do the actual work of calculating the numbers, and the XL3DoWriteback formulae remain dormant until all the values are ready, then are activated in one transaction.

If this sounds useful for you, here’s how to set it up.

The XL3DoWriteback Formula

In addition to the member list required by the XL3LookupRW formula, the XL3DoWriteback formula requires two extra parameters:

• PerformWriteback: this parameter tells the formula whether it should be in active writeback mode, or should remain dormant
• Value: this parameter gives the new value that should be written back to the tuple

Following these two parameters are the connection number, and the hierarchy-member pairs that will be familiar to you from the XL3Lookup and XL3LookupRW formulae.

The PerformWriteback parameter is a bit special. If it refers to a cell that contains only a boolean value of TRUE, then when it has finished sending the value, it will set that cell back to FALSE. This means that periods of writing and non-writing are very easy to define. In order to maximise the power of this, we usually point all the XL3DoWriteback formulae at a single PerformWriteback cell, which we can switch using an XL3Link formula. For example:

A1: =XL3Link(XL3Address($A$1),"Write changes",,XL3Address($B$1),TRUE)

B1: FALSE

C3: 1,000

C4: 0.85

C5: 20,132

C6 =C3*C4*C5

D3: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C3,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Production]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D4: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C4,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Our %age]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D5: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C5,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Price]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D6: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C6,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Forecast Revenue]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

In this example, C3, C4 and C5 are cells containing the raw values. Since we know that the forecast revenue is a product of the production, the percentage and the price per unit, C6 is just the product over those three cells. The four XL3DoWriteback formulae in column D refer to these value cells, but because the value in cell B1 is FALSE, nothing is written back yet.

In cell A1 is a XL3Link formula that, when clicked, will change B1 to TRUE. This immediately signals the XL3DoWriteback formulae that they should gather and write back their values. Once that transaction has been sent to the cube, the XL3DoWritebacks set cell B1 back to FALSE, and the workbook is back to the ready state.

The Setup

To make it as easy and efficient as possible, we used:

• one section for values. These were a mix of XL3Lookup formulae, typed-in values and standard Excel formulae
• one section for XL3DoWriteback formulae. We pared away any excess XL3DoWriteback formulae, leaving only those cells that we were sure we wanted to be writeable
• a single cell with the boolean value, set to FALSE
• an XL3Link in a highly visible place, to switch the boolean cell. In this case, the cell containing the boolean value was B1:

=XL3Link(XL3Address($A$1),"Write changes",,XL3Address($B$1),TRUE)

The final workbook looked a little like this (except, of course, much larger!):

The customer would then enter all the necessary values on the left section, using whatever combination of Excel formulae, cube lookups and typed-in values he needed, without any wait between entries. A single click of the XL3Link then wrote the values back in a single batch, leaving the customer to do other jobs.

The revised model allows the user to update entries quickly and efficiently, without any ‘write’ delay. The numbers to be written back can be calculated using Excel formulae as needed based on the raw input numbers. When the input process is done and checked in Excel, everything can be committed to the cube with one button press. The end result – a happy customer, with more time to plan and analyse the budget, rather than just input it.

Further reading

XL3DoWriteback formula reference