When an Excel file is uploaded to Milliman Mind, all cells are scanned by the engine and organized in grids in accordance with their arrangements in Excel. The structure of your Excel model will define the navigation menu in Milliman Mind which provides 3 levels: Grids, Sheets, and Workbooks.
Grids
Sheets are read by Milliman Mind from left to right and top to bottom. When Milliman Mind encounters a not empty cell (that is not already part of a grid), it looks to the right and to the bottom of this cell until it finds an empty cell and creates a grid of this size.
Tip
Empty cells are by default not recognized as part of a grid within Milliman Mind.
To include your empty cells within a grid, add them the following content: '
Alone text cell
Milliman Mind will ignore any alone text cell (with no content around) in the spreadsheet.
Column headers
If the first row of a grid is filled only with strings, it will be recognized as columns headers for this grid in Milliman Mind. Otherwise, Milliman Mind will display “Col n“ as columns headers.
Grid Name
For better navigation in Milliman Mind, it is best to put the grid name in Excel as follows:
Otherwise, Milliman Mind will automatically name the grid “untitled” followed by the coordinates of the first cell of the grid in Excel.
Tip
If you add a comment to the grid name cell, this text will be displayed as a table description/introduction if the grid is added to workflow mode.
Sheets
Sheets names are used as folder names in the Milliman Mind menu.
If you want to hide an entire sheet, you can add the flag &&Hide to the sheet name.
If you define a color for your Excel sheet, it will be kept in Mind. Otherwise, default colors will be used.
Workbooks
Workbooks names are used as folders in Milliman Mind sidebar navigation. You will be able to navigate through your different workbooks with a dropdown menu.
Links between workbooks
Milliman Mind automatically recognizes and secures the links between different Excel workbooks. When you upload a file with external references in Milliman Mind, you can choose to preserve or cut the links and replace linked cells by assumptions.
Replication of workbook
Milliman Mind enables to replicate a workbook several times, with its Instances feature (Introduction to instances).
Dates
Mind enhances an intelligent dates handling system enabling you to automatically change the dates of your projects when you move to a further month/quarter/year based on the model date. The following indicators can be used in any of your field names/formulas:
- °Year0, °Year-1, °Year1, ... : Indicates the date is the same as the project date,, 1 year before, 1 year later, ...
- °Month0, °Month1, °Month2, ... : Same with months.
- °Half-year0, °Half-year1, °Half-year2, ... : Same with half-years.
- °Quarter0, °Quarter1, °Quarter2, ... : Same with quarters.
Lock number of simulations
You can define and lock a number of simulations per run directly in Excel in a grid with title #NbSimulations. In this case, input to choose the number of simulations will not be displayed to the user.
Example:
Cells
Outline/group of rows and columns
Milliman Mind supports outline/groups directly from Excel.
You can create different levels of hidden elements and get them back directly in Milliman Mind.
Cells format
Milliman Mind will retrieve cells format and style from your Excel file and use it directly in Mind. We do not support Themes colors and only simple cell formatting (bold, italic, underline, text, and background colors).
Turn on Excel Styles in the project settings to display Excel styles instead of Mind styles. For optimization reasons, Excel styles are not supported for empty cells. Add quote plus space to your empty cells to keep Excel styles in Mind.