Use AI to generate cell explanations

Use the new Explain cell feature to get an explanation of the underlying values that contribute to a specific cell value. Cell values can be a result of complex calculations, several consolidations, or rules. The Explain cell feature uses generative AI to summarize the cell intersection, underlying logic of the cell value, and source type.

The initial release of the Explain cell feature is available only in Planning Analytics Workspace Cloud and in English only.

Important: The Explain cell feature is part of the Planning Analytics AI assistant add-on, which requires a separate license purchase; it is not included in a standard Planning Analytics Workspace license. To purchase a license, contact your IBM® sales representative or go directly to your IBM account.

To get a cell explanation, right-click a cell in a cube view. Select Explain cell [AI] to generate the explanation.

A cell explanation featuring an AI-generated summary

The generated explanation includes a table, with the following columns, and an AI-generated summary:

Cell: Cell identifies the original cell by its coordinates in the cube, by using a comma-separated list of member names. If there are members that contribute to the original value, you can drill down to view those members, their values, and source.
Value: Displays the value of the original cell or member that contributes to the value of the original cell. If the value is over 10,000, the value that is displayed is truncated to an integer, otherwise the value shows two decimal places. You can hover over the displayed value to view the actual raw value as it exists in the TM1 database. To view the actual values for all data, enable Display unrounded values.
Source: Identifies the source of the value: Consolidation, Input (a leaf cell that is not rule calculated), or rule. If the source is a rule, the entire rule is displayed. If the rule is too long to appear in its entirety within the confines of the column, click Expand row to reveal the full rule. You can also click the AI icon in each source row to generate an explanation for that specific cell.

The Explain cell feature uses granite-3-8b-instruct from the Granite family of IBM foundation models to generate a descriptive summarization of the cell intersections.

After you generate a cell explanation, you can add the summary to the related cell as a comment.

For more information, see Get cell explanation with AI.