Working with Solve Definitions

Creating a solve definition

You choose Solve Definition from the Tools menu to create a new solve definition. This opens the Solve Definition dialog box where you name the solve definition. From this starting point you can do the following:

• Select the financial data item for the solve definition.

• If you want to use a model to calculate new values for the financial data item, select the model.

• If you want to use a hierarchy to roll data up, select the hierarchy dimension values that you want to include in the rollup.

• Save the solve definition.

Example: Solve definition

The following example shows the Solve Definition dialog box with a solve definition for the Actuals financial data item. The solve definition uses the Profit and Loss model and will aggregate dimensional hierarchies for Organization, Product, and Time.

Note: Dealing with zero values in financial data items

When creating formulas for solve definitions, remember that zero values entered into financial data items are stored in the database as NA values. Zero values entered into financial data items through a data reader are stored as zeros. This can affect the results of calculations that use zero values.

Running solve definitions

Both administrators and Budget workstation users can manually run solve definitions from the Solve Definition dialog box.

An administrator can also link a solve definition to a financial data item so that the solve definition runs automatically whenever a user submits data associated with a financial data item to the shared database. This feature is described in "Associating solve definitions with financial data items".

Setting the operational mode for running solve definitions

If you are using an Administrator workstation, where a solve is performed depends on the Operational Mode setting in the Options dialog box. If the Operational Mode is set to Administrator, data models are solved within your personal database. If the Operational Mode is set to Workstation, data models are submitted to the Task Processor and solved in the local shared database.

Modifying solve definitions

You choose Solve from the Tools menu to modify solve definitions. This opens the Solve Definition dialog box, where you can choose the solve definition that you want to modify. You can perform the following tasks:

• You can give a solve definition a new name.

• You can delete a saved solve definition from your personal database. As an administrator, you can also delete a solve definition from the shared database by deleting it from your personal database, and then distributing this change to the shared database.

• You can change the information for a solve definition. For example, you can change the model.

• You can move a solve definition to a new position in the list of solve definitions maintained by the system.

Related information

For more information about using solve definitions, search for the following topics in the Financial Analyzer Help system:

"Creating Solve Definitions"

"Deleting Solve Definitions"

"Moving Solve Definitions"

"Renaming Solve Definitions"

"Running Solve Definitions to Calculate New Data"

"Specifying the Operational Mode"