Customized business rules, variables, and menus can empower end-users while still maintaining governance over the budget. Calculation Manager, meanwhile, offers the components to create, deploy, and administer business rules and maximize the capabilities inherent in Hyperion Planning to solve business problems.  The following is a list of tips and tricks that will simplify the maintenance and administration of the various components associated with business rules in Calculation Manager…

1. Create variables globally first, and then at the application, plan type, and, if necessary, the individual rule.  This will simplify any necessary maintenance on variables and help create consistency with nomenclature.  Additionally, scripting, validating, and deploying rules becomes more efficient as variables do not need to be recreated for each.  Variables can be created specific to the business rule, plan type, application, or even globally.  Global variables generally represent member(s) from required dimensions, such as Scenario, Version, or Entity, and can be referenced by any business rule from any application in the environment.  Application variables may represent user-defined dimensions or members that are valid for all plan types whereas those associated to plan types are useful for dimensions, members, or SmartList values specific to that cube.  Finally, rule-specific variables could be strings or numeric values that are being set or used only for the rule and not intended for any others.
2. Hide variables that represent Point-of-View (POV) dimensions from prompting the user for “Run on Save” business rules.  When a rule is assigned to multiple data forms, certain situations may require that some variables prompt the user for selection while others may create data issues and potential user error.  By hiding the latter, the end-user experience is not only improved by reducing the number prompts, but data integrity is also ensured by calculating to the correct intersections.  Such hidden variables may represent the Scenario, Version, Year, or Entity dimensions, among other possibilities, within a “FIX” statement of the script, and could change from data form to data form.  To accomplish this, assign a default “Value” within the “Variables” tab of the Rule Designer, and select “Is Hidden” for those variables you wish to hide.  Then, select the “Use Members on Form” Business Rule Property in Form and Ad Hoc Management to dynamically change the variable based on POV.  The similar configuration can also be used for rules assigned to custom Menus.
3. Utilize all 4 different views available in Calculation Manager to help administer rules and other components.  The default view for Calculation Manager is “System View,” but there are three other views that can be useful when managing rules, and be accessed through the View menu options…
   1. Deployment View – quickly check which rules are validated and deployed and which are not within an application; extremely useful when migrating rules across environments or applications
   2. List View – filter through all Calculation Manager components, including scripts, templates, and formulas, based on application name and status (deployed, validated); provides information about the associated application, plan type, owner of the rule as well as status
   3. Custom View – create folders and subfolders to group rules within each plan type to quickly navigate and open rules; especially useful when the application uses over ten different rules
4. Manage business rule security using folders, if possible.  How many times has an end-user complained that they cannot see a right-click menu or he or she does not receive prompts when saving a form or the form is simply saving and a rule is not successfully completing?  Although there may be several reasons behind this, generally, the answer is that “Launch” privileges were not granted.  Rather than assigning access directly to the individual rules, group rules into meaningful folders (much like data forms), and assign access on the folder. This will help ensure that all rules have the correct permissions, simplify object-level security, and ultimately help administrators avoid those late afternoon phone calls or emails from end-users!

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