Activation context generation failed ... HsxClient.dll

After a server patch, the HFM (Hyperion Financial Management) Windows client could not start. Below is the error message in Event Viewer.

SideBySide,
Activation context generation failed for "... HsxClient.dll". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFC,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="8.0.50727.4053" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

Oracle Support suggested reinstalling VC++ Redistributable 2005. Searching for the version number brings up "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update". Installing the x86 redistributable package solved the problem.

Hyperion Financial Reporting book point of view

After changing a report dimension's point of view to "User point of view" in Hyperion Financial Reporting, check that books that include this report actually allows you to select values in this changed dimension. I found that these books need to be opened and resaved using the editor before I can select a member in that dimension.

Smart View "Error" text in Excel cells

If your Excel worksheet has a lot of Smart View formulas (e.g. more than ten thousand HsGetValue), you may find that each cell with a Smart View formula shows "Error" after you refresh the worksheet. I think Excel encountered an error during the refresh process and does not update any of the cells. The workaround is to type Ctrl+Alt+F9 which "calculates all worksheets in all open workbooks, regardless of whether they have changed since the last calculation" (see Excel shortcut and function keys). This method of recalculation isn't visible in the Excel Formulas, Calculation menu.

BI+ Report User Point of View

Note to myself on how to add a dimension to the user point-of-view (POV) in Hyperion BI+.

1. Open the report using Financial Reporting Studio (FRS).
2. Click on the POV in a grid. FRS should open the Select Members dialog.
3. In Select Members, select the tab for the dimension you require.
4. In the dimension tab, set the member to be "User Point of View for [dimension]" (go to the bottom of the list).
5. Press the OK button to close the Select Members dialog.

The required dimension should now be in the user POV at the top of the report.

HFM Extended Analytics application name and table prefix

When we ran an Extended Analytics (EA) template in a new HFM application, the job halted with this error:

ERROR 2: Error during Extended Analytics export (Attention:  The metadata that currently exists for the Prefix %0 was extracted from a different Financial Management Application.  Extracted App: %1   Current App:  %2. You must use the Create option to overwrite this extract or use a different Prefix.)

According to the HFM Administrator's Guide, running an EA template would create a set of tables with the same prefix (e.g. DEMO_FACT, DEMO_YEAR) and master table called HFM_EA_EXTRACT. If you look in HFM_EA_EXTRACT, you should find an association between the application name and the tables with the same prefix. For this problem, my fix is to change the application name in HFM_EA_EXTRACT. The "Create" button in the HFM EA page didn't do anything and I didn't want to change the template's prefix because the applications that use the data would also have to be reconfigured.

Stupid LCM Error EPMIE-25014

When loading groups.csv into Hyperion Shared Services (HSS) using Lifecycle Manager (LCM), you may see these errors:

Importing Artifact - Groups.
error /Native Directory/Groups - EPMIE-25014: Failed to import all of the membership info for group [group name1].
error /Native Directory/Groups - EPMIE-25014: Failed to import all of the membership info for group [group name2].
...
Migration Status - Completed with failures.

Basically, LCM couldn't find the member(s) (i.e. user or another group) referenced by some groups in its directory. To find the missing member, you have to look for the common missing member in the groups reported in the errors.

This is a stupid error message because LCM must know which member is missing but doesn't include it in the error message!

Resize HFM Running Tasks for Smaller Screens

The list of running tasks in HFM is often too wide to be viewed without scrolling the Internet Explorer (MSIE) window horizontally (unless you have a really big monitor). On a notebook, the Description column is often rendered under the right edge of the browser window. My workaround is to use a custom CSS to break the text in cells into separate lines so that the output is formatted to fit the window's width.

1. Create a CSS file called Personal.css.
2. Add this line to the file: td.line { white-space: normal !important; }.
3. Open MSIE.
4. In MSIE:
   1. Select menu item Tools, Internet Options.
   2. Press the Accessibility button.
   3. Tick the User style sheet checkbox and add the path to your CSS file in the Style sheet text field.

Using !important allows your custom CSS to override the HFM CSS definition, and white-space: normal allows the browser to break text in table cells at white spaces, instead of keeping the text in one line (HFM had white-space: nowrap).

Google ChromeFrame incompatible with Oracle Hyperion DRM

If you have installed the Google ChromeFrame add-on for Internet Explorer (MSIE) 7 or 8, you may find that you cannot login to Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) 11.1.2.1. After MSIE loads the DRM login page, you may see some Javascript errors and when you press the Log on button, nothing happens.

Coincidentally, I started seeing this error message on another web site: ERROR: Possible problem with your *.gwt.xml module file. The compile time user.agent value(ie8) does not match the runtime user.agent value (safari). Expect errors. It seems that Google ChromeFrame add-on, which I installed to improve Javascript performance when I was using IE7, can send the wrong user-agent information to a server (even if the add-on is disabled). I have since upgraded to MSIE8, which is fast enough, so I no longer needed ChromeFrame and I uninstalled it.

Now, I can login to DRM and the GWT error messages no longer appear.