Time Period Formatted line items dependency on Time Range

[Sukh_Sandhu]

Currently dropdown for time period formatted line items shows all time periods for Model Calendar. There should be an option to make them dependent on Time range applicable to that particular Module/Line Item. For Example: If Model has 5 years, a Month formatted line item will show all 60 months in dropdown even if that Module has a time range of 1 year. There should be an option to show only 12 months in this case.

[ElvinSee]

When using Time Periods to format a line item (ie. for a user to select a time period) the entire superset is presented, this cause confusion to the user if they might be seeing unwanted time scale for selection. Thus will be good if we can apply time range into the formatted line item.

[nick_barker]

Think this is a great idea to improve user interaction in an application.

[obriegr]

Problem: Formatting a line item to a time period, and selecting "Month" as the period results in all available Months in the model. This makes it so that if you have a multiple year model, the end user can select a period that extends beyond the time they are able to show impact (past), or in other instances attempt to make changes to a future state that is outlandishly far out (10 year forecast number direct adjustment at year 10)

- End users are complaining about seeing Prior Year months when they are forecasting was the catalyst for the post, but I obviously was able to come up with an additional scenario that could be applicable to the change.

Temporary solution(s): 1) Tough, deal with it, and select reasonable time slots. 2) Build a 'fake' drop down list, and hide values on the back end that correlate to the field to limit users ability to manipulate - downside, it is not very sustainable/easy to overlook during model roll over. 3) Build a numbered list like 2, but have the display name built around the current time - downside is it is somewhat complex to set up/not intuitive - not audit-able

Ideal solution: When selecting time period as a line item format, you also have a drop down that allows selection of Time Ranges built into the model, which would filter out all other options that don't fit inside the available option OR have the ability to reference another line item formatted as a boolean that has a time element which allows for more flexibility of the builder to create a formula to limit the displayed periods.

[alexpavel]

Very good point!. 

I think it would be enough if for "Time" based list it will be made available the "Dependent" flag with the same functionality as for the "normal lists".

Normal Month using "Time" formatted list cannot be filtered for the current year months. 

Indeed, the only workaround is to use a "dummy month" normal list using the same elements present in Time and use "Dependent" option, so the users will have the same "look & feel"...but technically it will be a normal list that can be "transformed" quite easily in Time List.  

This way you can filter only the current year months (for example)

[obriegr]

As I was looking at my current work around. It only functions if you use a process to load in the end users entries. Otherwise when you switch the model YoY all of the entries will shift forwards a year, which can have catastrophic repercussions. Which makes this even more of an import request.

See below for my work around, and the result. The module that is using the list to generate a submission load, that the user presses a process button and pushes the entry into the data source module and clears the entry if it was processed. Again, complex, but works for this models purposes.

Resulting module (if the end user changes their mind, or needs to update the loaded data, which still has the full length of time the model is set for:

 for demonstrative purposes, effective month is noted as initial month here

[Blake_R]

I agree this would be very helpful. We have encountered user errors where the correct month is selected but in the wrong year. The consensus from our users is that there are just too many months in the drop down. Leaves too much room for error.

[AG]

Hi Team,

An enhancement which i prefer to be in place i.e. in Time period format line item format or list property format should have option to select time range too. Right now whatever the maximum time period is there that shows in drop down. But sometimes users asks for one year time selection only or sometimes asks for 10 year drop down. Workaround also doesn't works when we put a FINDITEM logic with text to month.

So, I think we should have that feature to select time range to show period in drop down with time period line item format. I have faced a challenge where client wants to select only months related to one year in one format and in another format user want to select months for next 10 years as they are having facility planning. Now if i create time range of 10 years then users see all months for next 10 years in all formats.

This enhancement would really help in some calculations and user experience.

[wendylynnwen]

It would be great to have the ability to limit the time selections when using a time dropdown selection on a given line item to choose between the Model Calendar timescale or a selected Time Range timescale. This can either be similar to dependent list dropdowns or something different. 

For example, if my Model Calendar only has FY20 but my Time Range has FY17-FY20. Currently, every dropdown selection includes all time periods in FY17-FY20, even if I only want to limit my selections to my FY20 time period. 

This will help reduce end user confusion and manual errors when entering in data. 

[mliffmann]

Completely agree!  Even the model calendar is set to 12 months but since we have a 24 month custom time range, 24 months show in the dropdown - in order to work around this we have to build a fake custom month list and link that to the time dimension, very cumbersome!

[alexpavel]

Indeed it would be nice to be able to limit the Time formatted line-items similar to "normal" lists. 

Currently the only workaround is to create a dummy Time list with the same elements of the real Time list and implement the limitation on the dummy Time list. 

[nick_barker]

Totally agree that this should be in the remit of the model builder to be able to decide which periods to display to a user. I would even suggest that it would be even better to also make this a dependent dropdown so that I can still use a Time Range or Model Calendar but then limit it by another line item. This then gives the ultimate degree of flexibility.