PlanningSpace Data Connector

The PlanningSpace Data Connector (PDC) is an Add-In for Microsoft Excel, which can be used to extract data from Planning Space into Excel, and to insert data into Planning Space. Thus, users are able to use any Excel-based functionality to process Planning Space data.

Important: The IPS Server needs to run an additional service to handle PDC client requests. IPS Server must be running in Secure HTTP (HTTPS) mode. You should check with your IPS Administrator that the server configuration is complete. (See the Planning Space 16.5 Deployment Guide for the installation instructions for PDC in the server.)

For version 16.5 Update 11 and later: The PDC tool performs a check of the Microsoft API versions installed in Office and it will display the information in its startup screen. If the PDC check function detects incompatible API versions in Office then the PDC tool will not show a login dialog and it will not be usable.

Software requirements

The minimum version of Excel required to use the PDC add-in is:

  • Microsoft Office Excel 2016 (desktop application), or
  • Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (also known as Office 365 ProPlus, desktop application or online).

Office 2016 must have its latest updates installed because the version of the Microsoft 'Dialog API set' must be 1.1 or higher. For version 16.5 Update 11 and later: The PDC tool performs a check of API version and it will display the information in its startup screen. If the PDC check function detects incompatible API versions in Office then the PDC tool will not show a login dialog and it will not be usable.

Note: the PDC is built as an Office Add-in and this is not the same technology as VSTO and COM add-ins; for explanation see Microsoft's Office Add-ins platform overview.

Setting up Excel to use the PDC

Each user needs to set up their personal Excel configuration to enable connection. The configuration steps needed depend on how the add-in has been deployed, either 'Admin Managed' or in a 'Shared manifest folder'; please check these details with your local Planning Space Administrator.

See Connecting the PDC to Planning Space.

Troubleshooting

If you are connecting to an upgraded version of PDC for the first time, and you use Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (i.e. Office 365 ProPlus, which relies on the locally-installed Microsoft browser application) there can be situations where old cache data interferes with the user interface. If this happens, click inside the PDC panel, and execute a browser 'clear cache' (usually the keyboard combination CTRL+F5).

Using the PDC

A typical use case for the PDC is as follows:

  1. Create a connection between Excel and a Planning Space tenant (for which you will need a valid user account with appropriate permissions already set to access the stored data that you wish to access).
  2. Extract the relevant data from Planning Space (by specifying version, date ranges, revisions, scenarios, variables, etc.) into an Excel workbook. There are two modes for data extraction:
    • Adhoc mode: you select variables to extract and the data will be written as a block of cells into the current workbook.
    • Predefined mode: you specify a mapping template so that Planning Space variables are mapped to defined cell ranges in the workbook.
  3. Perform Excel operations on the workbook.
  4. Update the Planning Space tenant with the modified data.