Synchronization in computing can be defined as “…the action of causing a set of data (or files) to remain identical in more than one location…”. In IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (or PAW) we can equate this to objects (perhaps an Exploration View and a Visualization) that you’ve configured to be synchronized within a PAW Sheet.

Setting up Synchronization

You can set (or configure) the level of synchronization (also known as the “Synchronization Scope” or “Sync Scope”) that you want between PAW objects (views, visualizations, and other widgets) either at the sheet level, or at the book level.

First let’s understand the difference between a PAW book and a PAW sheet: a Book can contain related data in the form of views, Websheets, scorecards, visualizations, graphics, videos, and embedded web pages and book can also contain one or more sheets (it might help if your think of a PAW book as an Excel Workbook and a PAW sheet as an Excel Worksheet).

In the below image I have created a PAW book named “Biz” which currently contains two sheets (“Sheet 1” and “Sheet 2”):

Assuming that all of your objects in both sheets are related, you may wish to make sure that all of those objects are synchronized so that whatever you are looking at within the book is always in the same context. If that is the case, then synchronizing at the book level is appropriate, otherwise you most likely want to consider setting the synchronization level to sheet.

Synchronization is off by default, so to set the Synchronization Scope, you can click on the sheet (to select it) and then click on Fields (to set synchronization, you must be in edit mode. Click to enter edit mode first). From there, you can set the scope by selecting Sheet or Book from the drop-down list:

A Working Example

Let’s see a working example of using sheet level synchronization. Suppose that you have an Exploration view and a Pie Chart Visualization of the same view side-by side on a sheet. You want to focus on motorcycle sales in a particular month. With synchronization enabled, when you select a month in the Month dimension in the Exploration View, the selection is automatically reflected in the Pie chart:

Dimensional Synchronization

Suppose that you now have a Regions dimension in our Motorcycle sales cube that organizes States into Sales Regions. If you might want to see the (total) West Region in the Pie Chart, but view only a selected state in the Exploration? To do that you would want to disable the synchronization of the Regions dimension for the Pie Chart:

Other Ideas

There are other options for using synchronization within your PAW pages so it helps to experiment with various approaches and settings. If you want to learn more how to use synchronization in PAW or are just curious about IBM Planning Analytics Workspace in general, feel free to contact QueBIT today. We would be happy to hear from you!