Implementing Data Locking for a Model

Implementing data locking in a model allows you to apply set up locks on specific data intersections of a model. This prevents changes to the data by either data entry or by other planning operations in a story, such as allocations. There are some things to remember:

• Data locking must be enabled in the model preferences.
• You must have the proper permissions to configure data locking.
• In a story, locked and restricted cells for public versions appear as read-only.
• You can delegate ownership of the data locks to members of a dimension.
• Data locking owners can change the state of the locks that they own.

Go to Model Settings of the planning model and click Access and Privacy. Activate Data Locking and set the Default Lock State. The default lock state can be either Open or Locked.

In the following example, you can see that Data Locking Ownership is enabled, with the following columns:

1. Hierarchy: A hierarchy is required so that statuses of parents can be inherited by children, for example. Children inherit the locks of parents.
2. Person Responsible: The Person Responsible property is used to determine the owners. Users here can be inherited from the Owner property.
3. Data Locking Owner: This property is created in the Organization dimension when data locking is enabled. The Owner property requires either teams or users, or both.

Version and Date are mandatory driving dimensions. The driving dimensions further define the specific intersection of data that will be locked.

For example, if you want to lock data for a specific member of an Organization dimension, you would need to include the Organization dimension as a driving dimension.

Select the data region for the lock. In the following example, 2021, Midwest, Forecast version is selected.

Select Show Grid to display a grid of the driving dimensions where you can set the lock state of each intersection:

• Open: Values are unlocked for this combination of members in table, and can be changed by any users who have permissions to enter values for the model.
• Restricted: Values can be changed only by a user who has effective ownership of locks on this combination of members. Select the restricted cell and select Add Owner under a driving dimension and choose one or more owners for the selected member of that driving dimension.
• Locked: Values cannot be changed for this combination of members in a table.

When you change the state for a parent member in a dimension, the same state is applied to its children as well. For example, if you lock North America, then the United States and Canada will also be locked.

In the example below, you select the Configure the Data Lock icon to open the Data Locking dialog. Then, after adding Entity as a new driving dimension, you select the Enable Ownership option. This prompts the system to look up owners from the Entity dimension. The Organization Type dimension is Entity, however, this depends on the dimensionality of the model as to which dimension is the Organization Type. For example, in cost center planning, the Cost Center dimension would be the Organization Type dimension.

• Data Locking Owner: Can contain one or more teams and users.
• Person Responsible: Can contain only one user.

Performance in planning models depends on queries and planning actions. These two factors can be optimized to reduce processing time when working with large public versions.

By optimizing the planning area, you keep the data size manageable and can work on data that’s relevant to you. You can think of the planning area as a version’s data used for all planning actions, that you can filter out and refine for a private version. Its size will vary depending on the model settings. Optimizing the planning area is especially useful when you’re trying to limit the data size of a model with a large public version.

You enable optimization of the planning area in the Model Settings, under the Data and Performance tab. Click the toggle under the Optimize Recommended Planning Area section. Select whether you want to limit the planning area based on data locking, data access control and model privacy, or both. Note that for both options to be effective, data access control and data locking must be enabled and configured.

You can limit the size of the planning area by using data access control, data locking, or both. This corresponds to the recommended planning area that decreases the size of a private version size when you create it based on data access and data locking.

• Data access restrictions give you access to the data for which you have write access.
• Data locking restrictions give you access to the data regions that are unlocked. When you edit a public version, or create a private one, the application stores a reduced data snapshot but still shows locked data outside of that snapshot.

When working with a public version in a story, the planning area filters the data based on what data you've permission to edit. Only data that you've edit permissions for will be put into edit mode. When creating a private version, you have the option to copy the recommended planning area to the private version. Data actions and multi actions only affect data within your planning area.