Concept: Multi-Instance Data Synchronization Methods

You can link multiple instances for a single organization into multi-instance or multi-domain setups. See Concept: Multi-Instances.

Multi-instance setups satisfy use cases for:

Functional Planning. Your organization wants separate instances for functional planning outside of your financial planning instance. Typical functional planning needs include:

Sales planning.

Workforce planning.

Marketing planning.

Department Level Planning. Your large departments within your organization want to manage their individual budgeting and planning lifecycles. By giving departments full control over who manages and accesses their plans, your departments maintain control. You can then share the department plans with other departments or corporate planners.

Synchronizing Data and Metadata Across Instances

A multi-instance setup can address different planning needs within the same organization. Organizations typically want to synchronize data
between their different instances. Example: Departmental expenses calculated in child instances might need to roll up to the parent instance for corporate-level reporting.

You might also want to synchronize metadata
across instances. Example: You might want all instances to keep the same chart of accounts. You would also want all of the changes to accounts to synchronize across all of your instances. Metadata changes would cascade from a parent instance where the accounts are managed. The remaining instances in the hierarchy pick up those changes.

If your Adaptive Planning instances are Workday-enabled, we don't recommend using the cascading approach. Cascading can create issues with setting the Workday ID correctly.

You can use these methods for synchronizing across a multi-instance configuration:

Linked Level Refresh. When an instance is part of a multi-instance setup, you can configure data synchronization from a child instance to a parent. You link a level in the child instance to a level in the parent instance. You can also set up how dimension values map when data flows through the linked instances. See Create Linked Levels for Multi-instances.

For metadata and data synchronization, we recommend that you use the integration framework. Use linked levels only for unique circumstances such as these:

A requirement to not use the integrations framework.

Very strict separation of administrative and security responsibilities.

Integration Framework. The Integration framework can transfer data and metadata between instances. With integration, you can use the Planning data source to retrieve information from your source planning system into staging, including:

Standard sheet data.

Cube sheet data.

Modeled sheet data.

Account metadata.

Level metadata.

Dimension metadata.

Attribute metadata.

See Steps: Set Up Planning Data Sources.

The data/metadata that comes into the staging area can load into the current instance with loaders. Optionally, the data/metadata can also load into a different instance or a third party system through a custom cloud loader.

See:

Concept: Loaders

Create Custom Cloud Loaders

Concept: Integration

Linked Modeled Sheet Refresh (Sales Planning Only)

If you have Sales Planning, you can move data between modeled sheets across instances when specific conditions on the modeled sheets are met.

Comparison of Multi-Instance Synchronization Methods

Use this table to help you understand the different data and metadata synchronization methods for your multi-instance setup.

	Linked Level Refresh	Integration Framework	Linked Modeled Sheets (Sales Planning only)
Data synchronization from child to parent instances	Yes	Yes	No
Data synchronization from parent to child instances	No	Yes	No
Data synchronization across sibling instances	No	Yes	No
Data synchronization across modeled sheets	No	Yes	Requires matching columns and dimension values with matching names on both instances. Doesn't support: Level attributes Dimension attributes Account attributes Column types: Text selector Initial balance Model sheet account (Display Column)
Data synchronization across cube sheets	No	Yes	No
Data synchronization across standard sheets	Yes	Yes	No
Data transformation during synchronization	No	Yes	No
Metadata synchronization across instances	No	Yes	No
Integration implementation project needed for multi-instances	No	Yes	No
Automated (scheduled) synchronization	No	Yes	No