While I love learning new EDM functionality and how to apply it to help our clients, I also like to think about easy ways that existing EDM users and administrators can optimize their existing implementation to make EDM even more effective and efficient for them. In other words, what are the “low hanging fruit” they can easily snag to turbocharge their EDM.

So, extending that thought and coupling it with an homage to the classic mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap” (a hilarious movie I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it), I came up with this idea of “Turning up your EDM Implementation to 11”!

In this blog, I will cover quick yet powerful ways to maximize your EDM volume:

• How to use simple, yet powerful, configuration tweaks to enhance your Approval Workflows
• How to use other Audit Types besides Transactions
• How to save and re-use commonly used configurations such as Viewpoint Queries, Compare Profiles, and Audit

So, let’s begin!

Power Up Your Approval Policies

There are multiple parameters that can quickly optimize your approval policies. For this blog, I want to focus on these:

• Approval Method – the traditional options used are Parallel (have multiple approvers approve a request at the same time) or Serial (have a set of approvers approve the request in a sequential or linear manner). But there are two other options:
  • Ownership – routes the request to an approver based on an Ownership property defined at the node level.
  • Management Approval – routes the request based on the ancestors of the requester (e.g. using an EDM application based upon the Users adapter, it will traverse up the supervisor chain of the requester hierarchy for approval).
• Prevent Auto-Approval for Enriched Requests – if a request has been enriched, an approver that normally would auto-approve (because they had approved the request prior to the enrichment) will now be able to review and interactively re-approve the request.
• Allow Time Setting Label – allows requests to reference future-dated Time Labels
• Policy Order – this parameter has been available for a long time. It allows you to develop an approval workflow “execution plan” for scenarios where you have multiple approval policies and you want to control the sequence in which those policies fire.

And keep in mind, there are a myriad of Filters available for approval policies. I won’t dive into those in this blog, but they offer powerful ways to conditionally fire approval workflows based on conditions, actions, request types, and top node filters. For example, execute different approval policies based on adding a Balance Sheet account vs. P&L account.

Amp Up Your Audit

I’ve touched on this in previous blog posts, but an oft overlooked and underappreciated feature is Audit.

This is what I observe: EDM users are very familiar and make regular use of Audit in terms of transaction history to review all changes to hierarchies. And that’s good because it’s a great feature!

But those same people overlook other valuable Audit Types that are available:

• System Events – audit system-wide changes that occurred including applicate template imports, index refreshes, and security changes (such as adding or deleting a user)
• Permissions – audit changes to permission and role assignments
• Policies – audit changes to approval policies
• Properties – audit changes to property definitions

As with the Transactions audit, these other Audit Types offer multiple filters to refine your audit results and provide the ability to download the results to an Excel file. I find the Properties download particularly helpful, as it includes a tremendous amount of detail, extensive formatting, and the property changes appear in bold font in the Excel download.

Turbo Charge Your Savings

Why configure something repeatedly when you can save that configuration once and re-use it? To not do that is just silly. In this case, I’m referring to Viewpoint Queries, Compare Profiles, and Audit Filters.

Viewpoint Queries

Viewpoint queries are useful to do more advanced and precise searches in EDM, beyond the built-in capabilities to search node name/description. For any DRM’ers out there, they are the equivalent of Property Queries. If you find yourself repeating the same query again, save that query definition and it will be immediately available to re-use in the future.

To create a viewpoint query, open a viewpoint and click the funnel icon on the left-hand vertical ribbon (alternately, click the 3-dot action menu on the Viewpoint tab and select Query).

From here you can define your query parameters including the population of nodes in the viewpoint you wish to search (either “All Nodes” or “Below Selected Node”) and the filters to include in the query. Multiple filters can be assembled using standard AND/OR operators.

The example below is a simple viewpoint query to locate any nodes starting with ‘A_1’. To save this query, click the 3-dot action menu and select Save. Provide a name/description for the query and click Save.

Now when you open the Viewpoint in the future, the viewpoint query will be displayed, and you can click on and run it. If you wish to edit the query parameters, simply update the node selection or filters and re-save the Viewpoint Query.

 

Fun Fact: you can also use Viewpoint Queries to search for those pesky Orphan Nodes!

Compare Profiles

Compare Profiles are a similar concept to Viewpoint Queries, in that they allow you to save and re-use a specific set of compare parameters. The process to create Compare Profiles is different, however.

To create a Compare Profile, first inspect the view where you want to perform the Compare. Go to the Compares tab and click Create:

Enter basic information such as the Compare Profile name and the viewpoints to compare. Click Create.

Then, edit the Compare Profile by selecting any additional options. But notice one important difference – you can define a Node Filter! This option is not available when defining a compare interactively/manually. The Node Filter provides another powerful mechanism to define a subset of nodes to include in the compare.

There are two reasons I love Compare Profiles:

• Node Filters – The ability to use a Node Filter with a compare is powerful and allows you to exclude those nodes that might otherwise be identified as differences that aren’t relevant to your compare.
• Property Compares – I often find when doing Property compares that I de-select certain properties to eliminate false positive results or differences that are not applicable or meaningful. Now I can select the exact properties I want one time and save that in my profile.

Audit Filters

This specifically applies to the Transactions audit type. Once you define your filters, click the 3-dot action menu and save. Enter a name for the filter and the next time you go to the Audit screen, that filter will appear for immediate use. Very useful for those recurring scenarios where you find yourself always setting the filters to specific values (e.g., show me all changes in the last 30 days; show all Account additions in the last month; show me any changes to the Account Type property, etc.).

Summary

That’s a wrap. I hope you found these tidbits useful and that you see how easily (and quickly) you can make some small changes in your daily habits with EDM that will provide immediate benefits. Until next time!

Before you go, be sure to check this classic video clip!

These go to 11: https://youtu.be/4xgx4k83zzc