Feeders

[Rtel]

Hello I am trying to understand how Feeder work and I have reads many articles and guides but not sure if anywhere it explains at cell level what actually happens between rules and feeders.

Please see the scenario below and the follow up question.

Lets for e.g. say In Account Cube there are 3 dimensions as follows

1) Department

a. All Dept. (Consolidated)
i. Dept1
ii. Dept2
iii. Dept3

2) Region

a. All regions (consolidated)
i. East
ii. West
iii. North
iv. South

3) Measures

a. Sales
b. Expense

Business rule to calculate budgeted expense is - Expense is 15 % of sale

Rule
[‘Expense’] = N: [‘Sale’]*0.15;
Feeder
[‘Sale’] => [‘Expense’];

In account cube there are 12 cells with Sales. (3 dept & 4 regions)

Question 1
If value of cell with ‘sales’ (Dept1, North, sale) changes via TI or Rule or manually, what does feeder do?

1) Will it mark the cell identified with (Dept1, North, Expense) to be included in ‘All region’ and ‘All Dept’ consolidations
and/or
2) Force calculation of Expense cell identified by (Dept1, North, Expense)?
and/or
3) Or something else that I have not understood?

Question 2
Is firing of feeders means marking of a Cell to be included in a consolidation or something else?

Question 3
Is there a way to read a feeder file and understand what it does?

Question 4
If feeding cells means marking of a cell to be included in a consolidation, why do we need left hand side of a feeder formula? We can simply list those cells that needs to be marked for a consolidation.

In example above; can we not write logically:
Feed all Expense cells instead of Sales feeds Expense.

Kindly suggest me If there is any documentation or book that explains about feeder in very detail.

Thanks in advance for all the comments and suggestions!

Rtel

[Wim Gielis]

Hello,

Here is Question (Q) and Answer (A).


Q1
If value of cell with ‘sales’ (Dept1, North, sale) changes via TI or Rule or manually, what does feeder do?
A1
It marks the corresponding cell for Expense (Dept1, North, Expense) as to be included in any consolidation value. If it's not already marked in that way (for example, a different cube might send a feeder to this particular cell too)

1) Will it mark the cell identified with (Dept1, North, Expense) to be included in ‘All region’ and ‘All Dept’ consolidations
and/or
2) Force calculation of Expense cell identified by (Dept1, North, Expense)?
and/or
3) Or something else that I have not understood?

A1-bis
When asking for totals (consolidations) TM1 will add up the values at level level, and skip any intermediate subconsolidations you do not ask for - should they exist.
Only cells that are real input cells (like white cells with manual entry, copy/paste, data spreading, Turbo Integrator) will be taken into account in the consolidated value, and also the values that have been marked with a feeder. TM1 skips zeroes, but a zero value marked with a feeder will be taken in the calculations.

Q2
Is firing of feeders means marking of a Cell to be included in a consolidation or something else?
A2
Such that the consolidation algorithm exactly knows which cells to skip and which cells to include.

Q3
Is there a way to read a feeder file and understand what it does?
A3
Why would you want to ? There are tools in TM1 to understand which cells are fed.

Q4
If feeding cells means marking of a cell to be included in a consolidation, why do we need left hand side of a feeder formula? We can simply list those cells that needs to be marked for a consolidation.

In example above; can we not write logically:
Feed all Expense cells instead of Sales feeds Expense.

A4
No because that would include also the cells that are 0 anyway, for which there is no 'driver' (the sales). That's the whole point, keeping the number of cells to be added up as small as possible, while still making sure totals will be correct too (this is, no underfeeding and no overfeeding, correct consolidated values in the most efficient way)

[Rtel]

Hello Wim, thank you very much for the information/education. This helps a lot understanding the concept.

Regards,

Rtel