Data entry commentary and sheet reconstruction for multidimensional enterprise system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016110425-A1
Application number	US-201514985932-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Dec 31, 2015
Priority date	Dec 4, 2007
Publication date	Apr 21, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A computing device is described that includes a user interface to receive contribution data of an enterprise and to display a sheet of the contribution data, an annotation interface module to receive one or more annotations for objects of the contribution data, a planning application to retrieve a context definition defining a context in which each of the annotations was received, and an annotation table to store each of the annotations and the context definition corresponding to each of the annotations. The user interface may be configured to output the annotations. The computing device may improve the collaborative process of developing multidimensional data. Users of the computing device may quickly and easily share their thoughts, questions, and comments about the data through annotations. Recreating an annotated sheet may be done efficiently by storing relevant coordinates.

First claim

1 . A method comprising:
retrieving contribution data from an enterprise system, wherein the contribution data is arranged in N dimensions in a multidimensional database, and wherein N is greater than two; retrieving a first annotation for an object of the contribution data from the enterprise system; retrieving a context definition defining a context in which the first annotation was entered, wherein the context corresponds to a sheet representative of the contribution data, the sheet comprising full versions of two of the N dimensions and single values for each of the remaining N dimensions; generating a link to the context defined by the context definition; and outputting the link.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising outputting the sheet in accordance with the context definition when the link is selected.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the first annotation in an annotation table.

4 . A computing device comprising:
a user interface to receive contribution data of an enterprise and to display a sheet of the contribution data, wherein the contribution data is arranged in N dimensions in a multidimensional database, wherein N is greater than two, and wherein the sheet comprises full versions of two of the N dimensions and single values for each of the remaining N dimensions; an annotation interface module to receive one or more annotations for objects of the contribution data; a planning application to retrieve a context definition defining a context in which each of the annotations was received, wherein the context definition defines the sheet of the contribution data; and an annotation table to store each of the annotations and the context definition corresponding to each of the annotations, wherein the user interface is configured to output the annotations.

5 . The computing device of claim 4 ,
wherein the annotation interface module is configured to receive at least two annotations for an object of the contribution data within the same context, wherein the planning application is configured to retrieve coordinates defining the object within the context definition, and wherein the annotation table is configured to store the coordinates.

6 . The computing device of claim 4 , wherein at least one of the annotations includes at least one of a user identifier to identify a user who entered the annotation, a date identifier to identify the date on which the annotation was entered, a value indicator to identify the value of the object at the time the annotation was entered, a comment field to present a comment from the user who entered the annotation, or an attached file.

7 . The computing device of claim 4 , further comprising a commentary browser to output a link to the context defined by the context definition for at least one of the annotations.

8 . The computing device of claim 7 , wherein the planning application is configured to instruct the user interface to generate the sheet defined by the context associated with the link when the link is selected.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Ballantine Peter R
• Conic Sasa
• Hodge Johnathan

Classifications

• G06F40/134

  Hyperlinking · CPC title

• G06F40/169

  Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes · CPC title

• G06F16/22

  Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures · CPC title

• G06F16/2264

  Multidimensional index structures · CPC title

• G06F16/24575

  using context · CPC title