Solve Overview

The Solve plug-in for Tabulate lets users build decision models and drive advanced optimization logic for what-if and prescriptive analyses. The Tabulate spreadsheet tool provides a strong paradigm for business users to design their business and decision flow logic through cells and formulas combined with live data feeding those elements. This "graphical" approach in the Tabulate / Solve combination offers the ability to:

  • Drive optimizations with live data that can be changed by end users in live interactive presentations, without accessing the Solve logic and spreadsheet directly.
  • Drive optimizations that will adjust based on new data feeds into the prescribed models and these in turn drive downstream capabilities (like data alerts, publications, API triggers and so on).
  • Drive optimizations that are customized to each user and their secured data sets.

Solve Topics

  • Optimization Explained.

    The mathematical optimization provided by Solve helps you to use limited resources to produce the best possible outcome based on a variety of inputs and settings. This topic helps you to understand what optimization is, and why you might want to use it.

  • Using Solve.

    This task describes how to use the Solve plug-in to find an optimized value for a particular "objective" cell, based on decision variables and constraints in the Tabulate spreadsheet.

  • Solve Panel.

    The Solve panel is used to configure and then run an optimization.

  • Complete Solve Example.

    In this complete example, we seek to maximize revenue by determining the optimal number of baked goods to produce, from a limited selection of ingredients and so on.

    This example should help you to understand the full end-to-end use of Solve, from data input to the production of optimized variable details.

Solve Administration

In addition to the day-to-day use of Solve to create optimizations (above), administrators may also want to configure the settings in the Admin Console:

  • Solve Services. The Solve service settings provide some control over how optimizations are processed and handled. Settings can be set for the entire platform or for each Solve server in a multi-server deployment.
  • Solve Logs. Solve Transaction logging provides a list of all of the occasions on which Solve algorithms have been run in the application, within a given time period.
  • Solve Access. The type of Solve engine - standard or enterprise - depends on your Solve license. This topic describes the effect of your Solve license on the optimization capacity features of Solve.