I once had a call from a client where the connection to Planning Analytics for Excel (PAX) was greyed out. We did a bit of troubleshooting and it turned out that the problem was that TM1Web was not working properly and, for whatever reason, this meant that users were unable to login to Planning Analytics for Excel, where when they went to the PAX menu and clicked Connect, the available servers list showed the server they wanted to login to as grey.
Troubleshooting a Greyed Out PAX Connection
Initially we thought that the Planning Analytics Workspace server must have died (you will recall that PAX uses the PAW URL to connect to TM1). So we opened Planning Analytics Workspace in a browser and then created a test book over our server and it all worked properly.
We then went back a step and logged onto the TM1 server itself via RDP and opened TM1Web in a browser. This failed, so we were pretty sure we had the culprit.
I then restarted the “IBM Cognos TM1” service and PAX was back.
What we found interesting is that although PAX uses the PAW connection, it also uses TM1Web and if TM1 Web was not available, then PAX fails as well.
