Excel shortcuts and TM1
- Apr. 02, 2014
Introduction
In this article, I would like to give basic information on how I start the Perspectives TM1 client. Specifically, I will show the way I organize 2 Excel shortcuts and several add-ins. This page also serves as a reminder to myself, whenever I need to work on a different computer or mine gets re-configured. I updated this article for a new fresh installation of TM1 10.2 on a Windows 7 machine.
Loading the Perspectives add-in on demand
The first observation is that I only load the Perspectives add-in when needed. That is, I have a first shortcut to Excel 2013 without anything related to TM1. See the below screenshot:
So, this is the usual shortcut of Excel 2013. Upon clicking the icon, Excel opens up, loading a handful of add-ins unrelated to TM1. For example, ASAP utilities or TranslateIt. A little bit of advertising for my friends will not do us any harm :-) All in all, nothing fancy over there and importantly, no need to wait a number of seconds before TM1 Perspectives is fully loaded and the ribbon controls are ready.
The Perspectives add-in
But wait, wasn’t I a TM1 developer by profession? So where is my TM1 Perspectives client? For that, I use the second shortcut:
The target of the shortcut called "Perspectives FULL", is:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\tm1_64\bin\tm1p.xla" "D:\Wim\TM1\Programs\TM1Tools\TM1Tools.xlam"
This long chain of text is nothing more than a concatenation of 3 files and their associated paths:
- First, we have Excel
- Then, we have the tm1p.xla Perspectives add-in
- Lastly, I also load the TM1Tools add-in in exactly the same way (it is the version of TM1Tools that I extended earlier)
All 3 components are essential to me and a must when doing TM1 work in the familiar Excel environment. Now I can just lean back, hit the Windows Start button, type "Perspec" or something similar (sometimes I can type more characters, sometimes less, it depends on how much time I have on my hands). And Windows proposes me 2 options: "Perspectives FULL" and Perspectives. I prefer the former for obvious reasons if you understand this article :-) Besides the regular, loading fast, shortcut for Excel 2013, I now have my full-blown "TM1 Perspectives + TM1Tools" shortcut ! If you prefer, you may want have the 2 shortcuts in the Windows Taskbar, that is up to you.
Voilà, that is how I organize things. You can always let me know differing contexts, I would love to hear it and learn.
