Picklists are a beloved feature in TM1/Planning Analytics (PA) as it helps prevent user input errors, by limiting the values that can be typed into a cell.

How to Create a Picklist in TM1/PA using Attributes:

  1. Create an attribute off any given dimension and name it “Picklist.” Write the element attribute names.
  2. In this example, I created a “Food Measures” dimension to have a “Picklist” attribute and used three different approaches to create the picklists:
    1. Static elements –> Static:Element names (each element must be separated by colons)
    2. Subset of elements –> Subset:DimensonName:SubsetName
    3. List the entire Dimension –> Dimension:DimensionName

How to Create a Picklist in TM1/PA using Rules:

The benefit of using rules for picklist is that you can limit drop downs based off if statements. Using a workforce planning example, perhaps we want to say “ONLY when the employee is a new employee, would a user have the ability to edit the parameters and use the picklist dropdown selections. OTHERWISE, the user would do not have a picklist dropdown selection.”

To create a picklist with rules:

  1. Right click on any cube and select “Create Picklist Cube.”
  2. This will create a Control Cube }Picklist_CubeName
  3. Create rules on that new cube
  4. Write the rules to say whatever your picklists drop downs are