1. Working with Planning
  2. Using IPM Insights to Inform Your Decision-Making
  3. Analyzing Insights

Analyzing Insights

IPM Insights in Planning helps you accomplish a data-driven approach to forecasting using data science.

Use the Insights dashboard to review the insights your administrator configured for you. The dashboard includes all available insights based on your user security. Each row on the Insights dashboard represents an insight, which can help you find patterns to analyze. Insights are displayed in the order of magnitude of the deviations to help you prioritize the order in which to evaluate them. For example, if the deviation is higher, it's more important for you to evaluate it.

  1. From the Home page, click IPM and then click Insights.
  2. Review your insights on the dashboard.

    Each row on the Insights dashboard represents an insight; the columns represent attributes for each insight. Unread insights are flagged with an indicator: Unread insight indicator. Your insights are listed in order of magnitude.

    Note:

    • Priority categorizes insights into High, Medium, and Low priority, using magnitude thresholds defined by your administrator.
    • Impact indicates the relative amount of deviation. You can focus your attention on the insights that have more extreme variations, or a higher magnitude.
    • Value displays the absolute value of the deviation for this insight.
  3. To see details about an insight, from the Actions menu for the insight, click View Details. You can also click the link in the Details column on the Insights dashboard.

    You see the Analyzer view that includes a description of the insight, along with a graph of the values.

    Hover over any graph point to see details about the value.

    You can see up to 18 periods on a time on the graph. Use the slider bar to see more periods, or to zoom in on a timeframe or set of values.

  4. Review the graph to help evaluate the data, and take action:
    • For Forecast Bias insights, review where variances are greatest between historical forecasts and actuals. This can help you recognize any hidden bias in forecasts. You can review the data in graph and in table form.
    • For Prediction insights, review where variances are greatest between future forecasts and the predicted values.

      To update your forecast to use the predicted values, click Update Forecast. If you want to manually revise any of the predicted values before you update the forecast, select a row (for the scenario you want), click Override to copy the values, modify the values, and then click Update Forecast.

    • For Anomaly insights, outlier values are marked with a star Outlier indicator to make them easy to spot.
  5. From the Analyzer view for an insight, take an action:
    • To see details about an insight or to enter comments, click Insights explainability icon (Explainability). The Explainability tab shows details about the insight including metrics and methods used in the insight. This detail makes the insight data more prominent and more transparent.

      Click Comments to enter your comments about the insight, for example to explain a variance to a colleague, and then click Save Insights Comments (Save Insights Comments).

      Note:

      To delete a comment, on the Comments tab, hover over a comment, and then click Delete icon (Delete). To delete a comment from the Insights dashboard, click the Comments box Comments box, hover over a comment, and then click Delete icon (Delete). You can delete comments you have entered. Administrators can delete comments entered by any user.

    • Collaborate with your peers about Insights using tags (# or @) in comments. For more information, see Collaborating with Insights Using Tags.

    • Click Open As Adhoc to open the insight for further ad hoc analysis.

      To open the ad hoc grid in Oracle Smart View for Office, click the Actions menu (Actions icon) and then click Open in Smart View.

    • For Prediction insights, you can view the historical data along with the prediction data. Click Show historical data. The chart is updated to show historical data as well as future data.
    • Click Dismiss to change the insight status to Closed. This status is reflected on the Insights dashboard for all users.

    Tip:

    Add Comments, and Open As Adhoc are also available from Actions ellipses menu on the Insights dashboard.
  6. Click Cancel, or close the tab for the insight to close Analyzer view and return to the Insights dashboard.
  7. When you've evaluated or taken action on an insight, you can change the status: On the Insights dashboard, from the Actions menu next to the insight, click Dismiss Insight. This changes the insight status to Closed. This status is reflected on the Insights dashboard for all users.
  8. For Prediction insights, from the Actions menu, click Accept to update the forecast data with the predicted values.

Insights are available on the Insights dashboard for six months, after which they are purged the next time an administrator runs an IPM Insights job.

Tutorials

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Your Goal Learn How
Learn how to use the Insights dashboard to review the insights your administrator configured for you. The dashboard includes all available insights based on your user security. Each row on the Insights dashboard represents an insight, which can help you find patterns to analyze. Insights are displayed in the order of magnitude of the deviations to help you prioritize the order in which to evaluate them. For example, if the deviation is higher, it's more important for you to evaluate it. tutorial icon Analyzing Insights and Taking Action