{"id":3475,"date":"2023-04-12T15:33:22","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T15:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quebit.com\/askquebit\/understanding-picklists-in-ibm-planning-analytics\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:23:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:23:43","slug":"understanding-picklists-in-ibm-planning-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quebit.com\/askquebit\/understanding-picklists-in-ibm-planning-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"What are picklists in IBM Planning Analytics and how do they work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picklists are not a new concept. They exist in many applications, including Web pages. Perhaps you know them as \u201cselection lists\u201d or \u201cdrop down lists\u201d. As a refresher, a picklist is a list of valid values for a specific element or cube cell. When you define a picklist for an element or a cell, a drop-down menu<\/em> containing the defined values is available in the specified cell when browsing a cube in any of the IBM Planning Analytics or TM1 clients (PAfE, Websheets, Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW), Architect etc).<\/p>\n

Values in cells containing a picklist are validated since a user must select one of the predefined values for the cell. If a user attempts to type in a value that is not valid for the cell (not in the picklist), an error appears indicating that only values from the pick list can be entered in the cell.<\/p>\n

Creating a Picklist<\/strong><\/p>\n

To have a picklist you need to have a picklist cube<\/em>. To manually create a picklist cube, you can do the following:<\/p>\n

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  1. Right-click on the cube<\/strong> you want to create a picklist for. Keep in mind this can be any<\/u> existing cube, even an \u201c}ElementAttributes_\u201d cube. This is handy since often attributes defined for a dimension must be maintained by specific users. Having a picklist of validated values for certain elements will certainly make things easier.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. Select \u201cCreate Picklist Cube<\/strong>\u201d. This will create a Control Cube named \u201c}Picklist_CubeName\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Picklist Techniques<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Once you have a picklist cube created, you need to determine what technique you want to use to populate the picklist. There are Static<\/strong>, Subset<\/strong>, Dimensional<\/strong> and Rule-based<\/strong> approaches for populating picklists.<\/p>\n