Providing software solutions since 1976

• Log in
• Create profile
• Welcome
  [Log out]
• Edit profile

• Print  |
• Feedback  |
• Share

  • E-mail

  
  
  

  E-mail This Page

  Your Name:*
  Your E-mail:*
  Recipient E-mail:*
  Send a copy to me
  Personal Message:
  
  

  * indicates a required field

You might find that the SAS Financial Management Form Manager takes a long time to render Data-Entry forms for users who have access to only a subset of the forms. This often occurs if you have published a large number of Data-Entry forms to the SAS Information Delivery Portal.

It has been observed that users with the Finance Process Administrator (FPA) role see the reports rendered rather quickly. This because the FPA users are able to see everything, whereas security/permissions need to be checked for users who do not have the FPA role.

The way this works is similar to the idea of airport security. If you have an airport security (TSA) badge, you immediately skip the entire security screening process, regardless of how long the line is. The rest of us - if we want to be safe - must wait in line as everyone is checked.

As we wait in line, it is similar to the idea of everyone carrying packages aboard the plane... and each package is 'quickly' passed through the X-ray to ensure that it is OK. A primary difference is that you are limited to how many bags you can carry on to the airplane. However, the SAS Information Delivery Portal does not place a hard limit on the number of reports available to you.

We have found that the situation with some large customer implementations is similar to traveling during a major holiday. Given the high volume of reports and the high volume of users, the security process backs up, and the line to get through becomes long.

Of course, at the airport security screening, the airplane flight crew has a badge that allows them to skip ahead of the entire line. They still need to be screened, but they do not have to wait behind the rest of us to do so.

SAS Financial Management does not currently have a security role that is the equivalent of the flight crew. Therefore, you are either 'airport security' (FPA role), and no screening is done, or you are like the rest of us and you wait in line.

In speaking with some 'high volume' users, we have found FPA users who are able to retrieve thousands of forms in a matter of seconds. One user noted that he changed his FPA role to something more 'typical' of a SAS Financial Management user (Analyst, Form Submitter, Form Approver, Solutions User). He went from seeing his thousands of forms (almost 4000) returned in a matter of seconds to having nothing yet returned after 7 minutes of waiting. This occurred because security/permissions needed to be verified for that user for each form as it was retrieved.

We continued to gather evidence from the field and it seems that somewhere in the vicinity of 200 forms is where the NON-FPA users started to experience response time issues. Please note this information is anecdotal at this point. We have not yet done a formal benchmark. This would necessitate documentation of the exact: user permissions, hardware/network environment, number of forms, number of dimensions/members in each form, amount of data in the model, and so on. But, it does seem that 200 forms might be a practical upper-limit at this time for the non-FPA users to see reasonable response time in the Form Manager.

We have tried different combinations of roles to see whether we could come up with something in between FPA and 'all others'. We have not yet come up with a formula that seems to readily overcome this issue.

We do not have the 'flight crew' role at this point to help you 'mostly' bypass security. Therefore, it might be necessary for you to do one of the following to get better response time in the Form Manager:

1. Reduce the number of forms each user submits/approves, and so on. OK, but that might not in itself be a practical result, but the next idea expands on that...
2. Consider adding new users so that instead of user 'Joe' trying to retrieve 2000 forms at once, you have something similar to:
   • 'Joe 1' sees the first 200 (or so) forms - for example, this could be separated to be something similar to all forms for 'France' or 'Payroll Expenses'
   • 'Joe 2' sees the next 200 (or so) forms - for example, this could be separated to be something similar to all forms for 'Italy or 'Selling Expenses'
   • And so on...
3. Grant the FPA role to more users - PROBABLY NOT ADVISABLE AS A PRACTICAL APPRROACH!

For what we have in SAS Financial Management 5.1 and 5.2 - and also what we are currently aware of for release 5.3 - option #2 above is likely your best choice. This initially might be a bit cumbersome to implement. But, it is mostly a matter of repeating permissions at a fairly high level. For example, 'Joe FA' is defined as an author for all France forms in SAS Financial Management Studio, 'Joe FR' is defined as a reviewer for all France forms, and so on.

For additional information and assistance, or to determine whether an experimental fix is appropriate for your situation, please contact SAS Technical Support.

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for SAS Financial Management 5.2_M1 is available at: