How to generate client side logs for the S&OP Excel Add-In

I previously created a blog showing how to generate logs for S&OP. You can find that here. As a follow up, I wanted to share information about another log that is quite useful for troubleshooting issues when using the S&OP Excel Add-In. I’ll detail the specifics of this log in the context of troubleshooting an error being given in Excel.

In this example, I’m refreshing a planning view and get an error: Error in refresh sheet.

To access the log, I simply open up windows explorer and enter in %TEMP%\log and hit enter.

Below you can see i’ve sorted by date and the most recent log, Log_424 is the pertinent log.

I open this log with a text editor, scroll to the very bottom and see the following:

2014-12-04 12:54:50,631|ERROR|Dataservice|FPMXLClient.BPCProxy.MetaData_Data.DataServiceHelper.ExecuteReport|JSMITH|||||1|Invalid member : x  Phone#

2014-12-04 12:54:52,256|ERROR|Automation|FPMXLClient.EPMAddInAutomation.RefreshActiveSheet|JSMITH|||||1|Error in refresh sheet#

The error is complaining about an invalid member – x  Phone.

In this particular workflow, there are two key places this member will be stored. In Master Data as well as in the Plan Object table. You can get this error if the values don’t match between the two tables.

The next step is to review the pertinent Master Data in Excel. To do this, click Download. Next, select your Master Data Type. Now add an Attribute for the object that was mentioned in the error message. Then click the ellipses. You can then type in the name of the item from the error.

In my case, i’ve found the problem. In the log, I can see that product family was incorrectly specified with two spaces between x and Phone while when i typed in the search window of the Download Master Data dialog, x Phone only had one space. Thus, there is an inconsistency that needs to be cleared up. In order to get assistance with this sort of problem, one can open a support message and share the log I’ve detailed above as well as the pertinent Master Data.

To summarize, the client side Excel Add-In log is very helpful to get a deeper view into your S&OP system.