Exploration Snapshots

Exploration Snapshots provide main planners with a comprehensive view of the entire plan and enhanced analytic capabilities.

Overview

Main planners can create an Exploration Snapshot to combine the details from segments across all plans to generate aggregated values. This will allow main planners to analyze plan metrics using segments across all subplans.

Exploration Snapshot workflow

As the main planner, follow this workflow to ensure that you can create Exploration Snapshots as the main planner.

Step One: Create a plan with a fixed plan structure

Exploration snapshots are only available for fixed plans. When creating your plan, select a fixed plan structure and then select segments that you want your subplanners to plan for. Subplanners will not be able to add additional segments or change the plan structure. For more information, see Plan Creation and Structure.

Step Two: Start a collaboration and delegate segments to subplanners

When filling in their assigned subplans, the subplanner can select additional segments to plan for from the Edit Configuration dialog. As a best practice, you can go into the subplans to set up the plan structure for your subplanners. For more information, see Start a Collaboration Project, Assign a Subplan, and Add a Segment.

Step Three: Consolidate the subplan values and end the collaboration

You must consolidate all subplan values into the main plan and end the collaboration before you can generate an Exploration Snapshot. To ensure all projected values are included in the Exploration Snapshot, you must go into and submit all unopened and incomplete subplans.

Step Four: Create an Exploration Snapshot

Create an Exploration Snapshot in the main plan and then navigate to Explore to analyze the plan metrics. For more information, see Create an Exploration Snapshot.

Best practices

Follow these best practices to ensure the aggregated values in the Exploration Snapshot match the expected values across all segments.

1. Ensure all subplans are assigned, populated, submitted, and consolidated before you create the Exploration Snapshot.
   If your consolidated plan contains subplans that were never assigned, the breakdown values in the Exploration Snapshot will not add up to the overall value when grouping by a segment that was only included in a subplan. This is because the Exploration Snapshot is missing information from the population included in the unassigned subplans.
2. Ensure all segments that you have included in the main plan have been delegated to a subplanner and populated.
   If some segments are left unpopulated by the subplanners, the breakdown values in the Exploration Snapshot will not add up to the overall value. This is because the Exploration Snapshot is missing information from the segments that were left unpopulated. To ensure all segments will be planned for, you can go into each subplan and set up the plan structure by selecting the segments before you assign the subplan to the subplanners.
3. Avoid overwriting values submitted by the subplanner.
   The application uses a bottom-up approach when aggregating values for the Exploration Snapshot. If there is a conflict, the subplan values will override the values in the main plan. If you change the values submitted by subplanner or don't consolidate the subplan values into the main plan before the Exploration Snapshot is created, there will be a discrepancy between the values shown in the Exploration Snapshot and the main plan.

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