Is your element name wrong? Wish you could update a misspelled, incorrect or changed element name in your TM1/Planning Analytics model?

Here’s the solution!

  1. Create an alias with all the updated names for all elements. It might be a good idea to name this alias “Old Name” or “Original Name” since once the swap occurs, this will then contain all the old element names and users won’t be confused. Make sure that the alias values are unique across both original element names and the updated names: you cannot use this technique to swap two element names, for example.
  2. Create a TurboIntegrator (TI) process and use the SaveDataAll function followed by the SwapAliasWithPrincipalName() function.
    Save Data Clears Cached dimension information from RAM (including alias information) and thus ensures a clean starting point.

Your TI code, which you would place on the Prolog tab of your TI process would look like this:

Where

  • dimName is the dimension name, written between single quotes
  • aliasName is the alias you created in step 1 above, also written between single quotes
  • flag is 0.

Use this function in the Prolog tab, not the Data tab as it’s done for the entire dimension.
For elements that don’t need any updating, leave it as the original element name.
Save and run the process.
As a best practice, we highly recommend doing this swap in a development environment first.

Here’s an example, where our original element list contains two elements (Straw Berry and Watermallon) that we would like to see changed.

In our example, notice how the element names Orange and Watermallon had changed using the alias swap function. The other two elements, which were already correct, stayed the same as we populated their alias name with their existing name.

This swap function switched the “new/correct” alias name to be the main element name, and the “old/incorrect” element name to then be the alias. This function will allow all of your existing reports, rules, etc. to still work because it’s keeping the “old” incorrect naming as the alias but swapping the “correct” name as then the new main element name.

Still have questions? We are happy to help! Contact a QueBIT consultant today at support@quebit.com.