Outbound rules
Business modelers and analysts use the tools in Planning Business Modeler to define different planning, forecast, and analytical scenarios. The result of these activities is not only fact data, but also reference metadata that describes the data structure and relationships. In some cases, Planning Business Modeler data also includes definitions of the actual calculations.
Outbound rule sets make it possible for you publish this semantically rich data to external data stores called Data Destinations that are specified by a data administrator. In this manner, your Planning Server data is available to an extended business user community, and can be used by applications other than Planning Server tools such as Planning Business Modeler and PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel. For example, at the end of the budget cycle, a customer might want to use new fact data in an application such as SAP. Alternatively, a customer might want to create a data catalog of results from Planning Business Modeler.
When you use an Outbound rule set, Planning Business Modeler also creates a log of the events that occurred when it exported data. It then stores the log file at the designated Data Destination. Applications that might use the data can use appropriate connectivity methods to acquire the data.
Note
When you run an Outbound rule set, Planning Server logs the time the export was created, and the time the file was last changed. This log time value is expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
For more information, see How do I export data with an outbound rule?
Special guidelines for Outbound rules and rule sets
To guarantee that data that is exported from Planning Server is as widely useful as possible, Outbound rules and rule sets must be constructed in special ways. The following list provides information about the special requirements of Outbound rules and rule sets.
Rule Set Structure
An Outbound rule set must be created as a root rule set. An Outbound rule must be contained in an Outbound rule set.
For more information, see Choose a rule set type.
Rule Set Execution
You may only run an Outbound rule set as part of a data export job. An Outbound rule may not be executed individually.
For information about how to run an Outbound rule set, see About Data Export jobs.
Model Properties
Before you can use an Outbound rule set, you must specify the export destination by providing an appropriate value for the following model properties. For more information, see Add, edit, or delete a model property.
Set the Enable model export model property to TRUE.
Set the Export Location model property to a valid export destination name.
To designate an export destination, a Planning Server administrator creates a Data Destination Connection. Planning Business Modeler uses the Display Name of the specified Data Destination Connection to provide values for the Data Export Location model property.
An Outbound Rule may not reference model variables of type Members of dimension.
Dimension Specification
Every dimension expression in the scope of the Outbound rule statement must be explicitly defined. Use of default dimension values is not permitted. This restriction includes implicit default values that Planning Business Modeler might supply.
If you do not specify a dimension explicitly, Planning Business Modeler displays an error.
Scope Statement Creation
You must use the Scope Editor in the Define Scopes pane to create the Scope statement. You may not compose an Outbound rule directly in the Rule Expressions pane.
For more information, see Defining a SCOPE statement.