The ClearFactr team wants to help ensure your success with our products. One of the easiest ways to do that is to take a moment to better understand what ClearFactr is, and what it isn’t. The latter is really important, because although it intentionally looks like a familiar spreadsheet, using it exactly like you might use a traditional spreadsheet might not produce the maximum benefit to you. Many of the features in ClearFactr were built specifically to eliminate the struggle you’d probably encounter trying to do the same thing with a traditional spreadsheet. This quick overview is designed to make you aware of some key capabilities so you can leverage them when you build your models, and collaborate around them with others.
We’d encourage you to review our “ClearFactr Solution Design Patterns” materials, which also includes specific Case Studies on how these Design Patterns have been successfully leveraged in the past.
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Within the app itself, look for intra-app help buttons and menu items for certain key features. They'll be prominently featured with buttons or icons that look like this s Utilize our Help menu for functional references, as well as feature guides devoted to our more advanced or elaborate features.
And contact us! We're reachable via support@clearfactr.com
To get the most out of ClearFactr, you'll want to remain aware of its key pillars of functionality, all mutually reinforcing:
Each of these functional areas are featured through various widgets in the WebApp's Dashboard and main toolbars once you open a model. So let's start a quick tour there.
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The Dashboard is your home base for all of your ClearFactr experiences. Most notable is the Model Browser, listing all of your models, and those which have been shared to you via other users. Widgets at the top of the Browser allow you to filter the list in a variety of ways, group models together via tags, and search for models whose names or descriptions contain your search terms. By default, models are sorted based on when you last interacted with them – most recent on top.
Each model shows associated information such as how many people have access to it, what your own access rights are, when it was last modified, and how many scenarios are associated with it. Right clicking on any model brings up a menu of actions that can be taken on it, including reviewing any engagement by others around the model, if it’s been shared with others.
To create a new model, use the Create button. You can:
Right-clicking on any item in the Browser brings up a menu that allows you operate on the selected model. This is one of several types of context-sensitive menus in the system.
The Model Engagement item will bring up this panel, which covers many of the Collaboration and Control capabilities:
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It can be helpful to think of this panel as a Virtual Data Room. Here you can see:
Depending on your own permissions with the model, you can also change the permissions of individual users, via ClearFactr's fine-grained permissioning capabilities.
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Seeing who has access to the model, but who hasn't actually looked at it, can be a great way of refining the collaboration process, or the audience for the model itself.
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Also worth noting on that same menu is the Scenarios item. This reveals the Scenario Summary panel showing all of the public scenarios associated with your model and who has created them. Scenarios can also be private, in which case you'll only see your own. Scenarios are one of the most powerful features in the platform and often allow you to vastly simplify your model. They allow for alternative calculations to be made, either via different assumptions, business logic, or both. Think of them as an overlay on top of the latest version of the model – changes introduced via your scenario will always take precedence over the cell values/formulas found in the latest version, or "base case."
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Any time you might have used a conditional function in a legacy spreadsheet, like 'IF', driven by some kind of "flag" or "switch" value in a particular cell, consider creating scenarios instead.
Scenarios can be viewed in isolation, compared to each other, and selectively merged back into the latest version. Click here to learn more.
All of the above can be thought of as helping you to understand your own modeling ecosystem. Now let's further understand a model itself.
[Deleted example of open AWS-demo model]
Once you've located a particular model in the Dashboard, simply double-click its row in the view, or click the Open button. The model will then appear in the traditional multi-tab, 2-dimensional grid format. Across the top of the screen you'll find a Main Menu, and one or more toolbars below that. We'll highlight some of their key components here.
One of the perennial problems with spreadsheets are the immediate types of questions a user typically has when they open someone else's model:
"What am I looking at?"
"Where are the inputs?"
"What drives what?"
"What's the bottom line here, and where does it come from?"
Even the author of a model will have these very questions, if the spreadsheet is one of many, and maybe one that they haven't looked at for a long time. Hence, the first pillar listed above: "Understanding Your Model." Admittedly there are cases where you might not need to care – you just trust the author of the model and their work. Even still, the entire point of having a model – as opposed to a static report – is to be able to experiment with different input values and see how certain results change. But that often leads to the following:
(from the model consumer): "I'm afraid to break something."
(from the model producer): "I'm afraid you might break something, so I'm going to spend lots of time locking various things down..."
All of this leads to a much less productive modeling experience, potentially massive headaches, and potentially massive operational risk.
To help with all of the above, ClearFactr lets you:
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Best practices for modeling often result in a given tab conveying a single purpose or result when considering the rows and columns in combination. For example, any time-based model might have dates from left to right, and various computed measures or results depicted on each row. This is a perfect setup for ClearFactr's natural language capabilities, which can then automatically translate something like G10 = G4 - G9 into "Net Profit Q4 2022 = Gross Revenue - Operating Expenses". Users can flip back and forth between "legacy formulas" and natural language with a click of a button. Learn more about how to utilize natural language in your model, here.
Moving on to the second pillar, "Built-In Analytics". Given the interactive, cause-and-effect exploratory power of a model, ClearFactr was designed from the ground up to eliminate some of the typical programmatic gymnastics many model producers go through to tell certain stories via their models to their audiences. Very often that leads to a question starting with "What If..."
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Structure your model in such a way that it's obvious to users how to leverage our What If tool. This single feature can save your model from growing three-fold or more in size, as it automatically buffers old and new results and allows you to easily compare them in one of three different formats, heat-mapping the changes for maximum cause-and-effect clarity. Any user can use this feature regardless of their permissions, and any temporary changes they see are never persisted in the model. Once again, this will be complementary to standard best practices, where key assumptions might be sectioned off in a single column or tab. Going one step further, utilize our Move Sheet Function to place a key tab to one side of the screen, with up to four other sheets results being shown side-by-side. This yields a very powerful and visually productive What If experience.
The What If tool essentially creates a single cell scenario; even though many other cells in the model might be affected, only one input value is being changed at a time. But there may be cases where you need to change multiple cells at the same time, and/or you want to save your work, but in a way that isn't baked into the model itself. This brings us to the Scenario Tool, mentioned above via the Dashboard View.
The Scenario Tool allows you to create named batches of temporary changes to cells, either of input values, formula logic, or both. You can then visualize the effects, much like a multi-cell What If tool. Once saved, the scenario can be restored as an overlay to the latest version of the model, or in "snapshot mode." The latter restores the model exactly as it was when the scenario was created; any more recent changes to the model are not incorporated.
Lastly, the Factors Tool acts a little like the What If tool in reverse: you pick the cell you're interested in, and ClearFactr will automatically find the input cells that drive that cell and rank them according to how much of an effect they have on your chosen cell.
Prior to Publishing your model, you'll want to give some thought as to how other users will interact with it. There are a few capabilities to consider:
Editing Modes
ClearFactr's stance on editing is a little different than that of other online spreadsheets. In a modeling situation, a change in a particular cell might cause any number of other cells to change as a result. Imagine you had just made a change and were studying its effects. Meanwhile some other cells have suddenly changed in a subtle way that was unrelated to your own change because some other user was also making cell edits. This would be extremely confusing! Therefore, ClearFactr will never apply changes from other users until you're ready. The owner of the model controls how this works via selecting either two possible editing modes:
It should be noted that Undo and Redo only operate on cell level changes. Structural changes can only be reverted via the Versioning tool (see below)
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Standard mode is more restrictive, but will provide a better modeling experience in the earlier stages of the model when the producer of the model is actively changing things. Live Multi-User Editing is most effective when there are many editors collaborating around a mostly-or-entirely data "model", and when these editors have well understood editing workflows around the model where potential conflicts are minimal.
Editing Roles
ClearFactr offers several user roles that can be designated on a per individual basis to every user who has access to the model. Only owner or co-author of the model can change these. A default role for any user with access can be assigned via the Model Settings panel. Per-user overrides of this default value can then be made via the Engagement panel in the Dashboard. The roles are:
Note that the ability to edit cells might be further restricted due to cell permissions, see below. Cell Permissions Via the Cell Permission tool, an owner or co-author can designate certain cells as editable, thereby designating all other cells as read-only, regardless of the user's editing role. This is a powerful feature designed to facilitate a situation where business logic needs to remain locked down, but various inputs might need to be editable and savable, creating new versions along the way.
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Remember that the Scenario Tool allows any user, in any editing role or cell permission situation, to make cell edits and save them in a safe way.
By introducing one or more "unlocked" cells, the entire remainder of the model is considered "locked" from editing. Thus, other users are being "permissioned" to edit the particular cells of the owner or co-author's choosing.
Versioning
Every piece of data in a ClearFactr model is versioned in a way that allows you to see a full audit trail of who did what and when. There are two primary ways of seeing this information:
Note that if you revert "back in time" to earlier version, the reversion is permanent – you can't then move "forward in time" to the formerly more recent version. For example, imagine you have versions 1, 2, 3 and 4, where 4 is the most recent and 1 is the oldest. If you decide to revert to version 2, versions 3 and 4 are permanently lost. Once reverted, your next saved change basically creates version 5, but with the parent being version 2.
Publishing and Teams
The biggest potential benefit from ClearFactr comes from sharing one or more models between two or more users. Creating Teams of users, and publishing your model to a Team, is how you'll get this done.
Creating a Team is currently an operation performed by the ClearFactr Customer Success team. Contact them to get started with this. Every Team requires two "approvers" (one of which might be you) who will be involved in the workflow process for managing the team's members and permissions going forward. Have these two names ready when you contact Customer Success.
Once you're a member of a given team, you'll automatically see that team's folder in your Dashboard, and within that folder you'll see all of the models you have access to, and your permissions for each of those models which can vary between them. The ability to publish a model from your private work area (your "My Models" folder) to any of the teams you're a member of is another one of ClearFactr's permissioned capabilities. The Team's approvers can grant you this role if you need it. For example, you might be only a consumer of models managed by one or your teams, but you might be a producer (publisher) of models for another.
Mechanically, there are two ways to initiate the publishing (or "sharing") process:
In either case, you'll be presented with a panel that asks which folder ("team") you want to publish the model to, and who on that team will acknowledge approve that publishing process. This step is an important part of ClearFactr's overall Software Development Lifecycle ("SDLC") process – it helps ensure the data integrity of the models that team members will find in their corresponding folders. The remainder of the panel gives you the opportunity to introduce additional designations and controls. These latter capabilities have earned ClearFactr's highest level internal certification for citizen developer and low-code tools. Notably, these additional controls allow you ensure that users cannot change the business logic of the model without a formal peer-reviewed process.
Tags: Getting Started
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