How to enforce valid member combinations in Planning?

Question

Hi,
Is it possible to enforce which combinations of members are valid in a Planning application? In Planning, each data cell represents the intersection of a member from each dimension. However, it is likely that not every combination of members is valid. For example, perhaps the combination of an Entity dimension member (like North Region) and an Account dimension member (like Salaries) should never exist because the North Region shoud not have data for Salaries. Is there a way to prevent data entry into the intersection of the North Region entity and Salaries account? Is there a way to define cross-dimension combination rules to prevent entry into cells that are defined to be invalid?
I currently have a Planning application that takes Actual data from another system, and the data coming from this system has defined member combinations that are allowed and not allowed. Is there a way I can define these same validation rules in the Planning application to maintain integrity and make sure that "impossible" combinations of data are not input into Planning? Thank you.

Answer 1

I am sorry to say that there is no way through Planning security to enforce combinations of members.
It's the nature of the OLAP beast below Planning's cover -- Essbase.
You can use security to restrict access to individual members, but cannot state "This Entity by these three Accounts only". What you can do is try to set up your forms so that this sort of metadata relationship shows up on the form -- attribute dimensions are often used to try to do this. It is an imperfect solution.
Regards,
Cameron Lackpour