Duplicating a scenario

It's less common, but you may find that you want to duplicate a scenario and its corresponding data. Usually this will only occur for budget or forecast scenarios. The primary purpose for this would be to keep your original scenario intact as you make changes in a new scenario built from the original.

This article contains the following sections: 

• Which Method Should I Choose? 
• Method 1 (Planning Purposes)
• Method 2 (Actuals or Actuals Pro Forma)

Choosing Your Method

The main distinction in choosing between methods is understanding where and how you want this data to appear in Catalyst. If you want the data to live and be available in the Planning page, then choose Method 1. If you want your data to be stored in Manage Actuals, then choose Method 2. 

Method 1

This is the easier method, but only allows you to edit the scenario data in the Planning section of Catalyst. If you want the new scenario to be editable in the Manage Actuals section, such as creating a Pro Forma scenario, use method 2. Both method 1 and 2 are consumable and visible in Excel and can be used to create pivot table based reports. 

Create a new scenario and use the original scenario as the source definition. 

1. Navigate to Administration > Site Management > Scenario.
2. Add New.
3. Add the scenario name, short name, include in the cube and in reporting and planning, choose your base scenario year, select your scenario type, and choose none for actuals through.
4. Here's where you can set up your source definition. Choose the scenario you want to duplicate in the Beginning Balance dropdown and for each period of the year.
5. This prepopulates the new scenario with a one-time snapshot of the data from the source scenario. If left unlocked, this new scenario is then editable via the Planning page in Catalyst, and will not continue to be fed or updated from the source scenario. 
   
   
   
   
6. Save and refresh the cube! 

Method 2

This method is it bit more laborious but can be used to create a replica of an Actuals scenario that also lives in the Manage Actuals section within Catalyst. A common use-case for this method is creating a Pro Forma scenario, which is effectively a replica of a prior year actuals selection. It can only be edited in the Manage Actuals section of Catalyst. Another use-case is literally just duplicating an actuals scenario into another actuals scenario, such as 2023 Actuals to 2023 Actuals (Copy). Both method 1 and 2 are consumable and visible in Excel and can be used to create pivot table based reports. 

An alternate way to copy or duplicate a scenario is to export all the data from the actuals page (if you're duplicating an actuals scenario) into Excel.

1. In this method, you're essentially creating a blank scenario and then manually populating it with data from another scenario.
2. First, create your new scenario. Choose scenario type as Pro Forma or Actuals, either will work. Choose the year of reference, which helps identify the scenario when categorizing it in Excel reports. The year you select won't make much of a difference outside of how it shows up in Excel, since you're going to manually populate data to it.  
3. If you're loading data to the new scenario from prior year actuals, navigate to Administration > Financial or Profitability Actuals. But you can also load to this new scenario from other scenarios, such as a budget or forecast, although that's more rare. To do so, navigate to Planning > Financial or Profitability depending on the type of plan. 
   
   
   
   
4. Select your filters, namely which scenario you want to duplicate and leave all other fields set to All. 
5. Apply filter and wait for the results to populate. 
6. Export to Excel under the Excel Options dropdown. 
7. In Excel, change the scenario name for each cell to the name of the scenario you created in Step 1. 
8. Choose upload from the EBM Office Bridge ribbon in Excel and upload the file. You can also do this from the same page where you exported the data from, under the Excel Options dropdown seen above. 

Note: This method may not allow you to capture all of the details and won't 100% cover all data conditions, but in some cases may work better than Method 1.