Designing and Managing Planning View Layouts and Saved Views
Learn how planners and consultants configure, save, and govern reusable Excel Add-In planning view layouts so that different user groups see the right key figures, attributes and time horizons without rebuilding views from scratch.
Explanation
A planning view in the SAP IBP Excel Add-In is the combination of a planning level (the set of master data attributes and time granularity used for aggregation/disaggregation), a set of key figures, filters, and a layout that arranges rows, columns and chart panes. Once a consultant has built a working view during configuration, the real operational value comes from packaging that view as a saved view that business users can retrieve consistently across sessions and machines. Why this matters: without disciplined saved-view management, planners end up manually rebuilding filters and key figure selections every week, which wastes time, introduces inconsistent analysis (different planners looking at different key figure sets), and increases the risk of someone editing the wrong key figure because the layout was assembled incorrectly. In a live S&OP or demand review cycle, having a governed set of saved views (e.g., "Demand Review – Product Family", "Supply Constraint Check – Plant Level") ensures every stakeholder sees a consistent, validated slice of the model. Structurally, a saved view captures: the planning level and time horizon, the key figure list and their display order, applied filters (product, location, customer, planning area attributes), sort order, and optionally an associated chart configuration. Saved views can be private (visible only to the creating user) or shared, depending on how the tenant's authorization and content sharing has been configured. Consultants should treat shared saved views as governed artifacts — changes to a shared view immediately affect every planner who opens it, so naming conventions, ownership, and a change process (e.g., only certain roles can edit shared views) should be agreed with the business early in the project. A related but distinct concept is the layout versus the underlying planning level. Two saved views can point at the same planning level but present very different layouts (e.g., one pivoted by month across columns, another by week; one showing only baseline demand, another showing baseline plus multiple statistical forecast versions side by side for comparison). Consultants need to understand that changing the underlying planning area's key figure calculation logic does not automatically update every saved view's key figure selection — views reference key figures by name/ID, so if a key figure is renamed or removed at the planning area level, dependent saved views will show errors or blank columns until manually corrected. Performance is a practical consideration: views with very wide key figure lists, deep attribute hierarchies, or unconstrained filters (no product/location filter at all) can be slow to open or refresh, especially in tenants with large planning areas. A best practice is to always apply a meaningful default filter (e.g., a specific planning scope or version) before saving a view, and to avoid pulling in key figures that are not actually needed for that specific planning task. From an integration perspective, saved views are stored on the IBP server side and are retrieved through the add-in each time it connects — they are not local Excel file artifacts, so a planner can open the same saved view on a different laptop and get identical results, which is an important distinction from ad hoc Excel workbooks the planner might build independently (those exist only locally unless explicitly published back). Consultants should be careful not to confuse a saved IBP view with a plain Excel file saved to disk containing pasted-in add-in data; the latter has no live connection back to the planning engine. Governance-wise, in regulated or multi-region deployments, it is common to define a small number of standard saved views per planning process (demand, supply, inventory, S&OP) as part of the solution design, then lock down who can create new shared views versus who can only consume them, to prevent an uncontrolled proliferation of near-duplicate views that confuses new planners and complicates support.
Real project scenario
During a global S&OP rollout, the consulting team created three governed saved views per region — 'Demand Review', 'Supply Constraint', and 'Executive S&OP Summary' — each pointing to a specific planning level and filtered by region. Regional planners initially began creating their own private variants with slightly different key figure orders, which caused confusion in cross-region calls when numbers appeared to differ (they were actually the same data, just filtered differently). The project team then restricted saved-view creation rights to a core group of super users and required any new shared view request to go through a short change request so that the total number of governed views stayed manageable and consistent across regions.
Common mistakes
• Building a saved view without a default filter, causing it to load excessively slowly for other users once shared. • Editing a shared view directly instead of creating a new version, which silently changes what every dependent planner sees. • Assuming a saved view is a local Excel file; losing work because the underlying planning area key figure was deleted or renamed. • Allowing every planner to create shared views, leading to dozens of near-duplicate views that are hard to support. • Not documenting which saved view is the 'source of truth' for a given planning cycle, causing reporting discrepancies.
Best practices
• Apply a meaningful default filter and scope to every saved view before sharing it to protect performance. • Establish a naming convention (e.g., process_scope_granularity) so views are self-explanatory. • Limit shared-view creation/edit rights to a small governed group of super users or consultants. • Document the mapping between business planning processes and their standard saved views. • Before renaming or removing a key figure at the planning area level, audit which saved views reference it. • Periodically review and retire unused or duplicate saved views to keep the view library manageable.
Interview angle
Interviewers often probe whether a candidate understands that saved views are server-side objects tied to a planning level, not local files, and whether the candidate can explain the operational risk of uncontrolled shared-view proliferation. Be ready to discuss how you would design a saved-view naming and governance convention for a multi-region planning process, and how you would react if a key figure rename broke several dependent views.