OBIEE Updates

June 14, 2018

This update relates to the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

OBI "By the Numbers" for May 2018

  • 99.1%: Percentage of queries that completed in 1 minute or under (Hard to beat that!!!)
  • 1,459: Number of distinct users in OBI for ALL subject areas
  • 172,144: Number of distinct requests made in ALL subject areas
    • The “Transaction Listing All” dashboard continues to make up almost half of all the requests at the university (76,224 requests)

June Monthly OBI Release

The next OBI release will begin on Thursday, June 21st at 6 p.m.  All changes will be implemented and the release complete by 9 a.m. on Friday, June 22nd.  Check out the newly updated OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page for details of the dashboard changes in this release.Update: “Name our Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Contest”

The window for voting in the “Name our Oracle Business Suite Contest” officially closed on Friday, May 25th.  As a reminder, we were looking to find a name for the OBI environment that contained the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

We had a terrific turnout with 679 votes received!  Thank you to all who submitted entries and who voted - we could not have done it without you.  It was an extremely close race, but the winning entry is:

HOBIE (Harvard Oracle Business Intelligence Environment) submitted by Thanh Than

Thanh is in the Executive Education department at Harvard Kennedy School.  Congratulations Thanh! She will receive:

  • A pizza party for her center up to a $150 value
  • Gratitude from Data Management Services – Thanks a $Million$!!
  • Endless acclaim, renown and fame for her and her team – Priceless!

The next steps include getting review/approval from a number of governing bodies, such as the Harvard Trademark Program, the Service Delivery subgroup of the University’s Chief Information Office, as well as the University’s Chief Information Officer herself.  Once we receive the appropriate approvals, we’ll start using HOBIE to describe the OBI environment that includes the dashboards for the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

Tips for OBI Financial / Grants Management Fiscal Year End Reporting

As the fiscal year comes to a close, many individuals have additional reporting responsibilities.  Creating financial reports is very few people's idea of a good time. Here's how to make your fiscal year-end reporting using Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) a little bit easier.

System Availability

The Data Warehouse nightly loads run from 8 p.m. – 7 a.m.  Do not run dashboards during this time, as an incomplete nightly close process may provide you with incomplete data.

Performance Tips

  • For speedier results, consider using the Transaction Listing All-Lite dashboard.
    • The dashboard includes only child object codes in order to find your chart values faster!
    • It has the newly added Fiscal Year prompt to make it easier to obtain your FY18 or FY19 expenses.
    • You’ll still be able to take advantage of all of the OBI features you love: exclude columns, subtotal, move columns to prompts and sections, export, print, save customizations and send bookmark links!
  • If using the Transaction Listing dashboards, use the Period prompt to obtain your results faster.
  • If exporting a large amount of data, export to a .CSV file using the “Export” link directly below the results to obtain your results faster.

Period to Period Prompt: Use Carefully!

  • During Fiscal Year-End, two fiscal years will be open, and this will affect the results that you get when using the Period to Period prompts which means that:
    • OBI will see the current fiscal year as FY19.
    • The Prior Fiscal Year selection will return FY18 data.
    • The Current Fiscal Year to Last Closed Period will not return any data because there is no closed period in FY19 until the 5th and final close.
    • The Current Fiscal Year to Current Open Period will show transactions posted to the month of July 2018.

Closing Selection Prompt

  • The Closing Selection prompts work a little differently than they did in CREW.
    • Use the Closing Selection prompt in conjunction with the appropriate Period prompt selection(s) for faster results.
    • When you select one of the Closing Selection prompt ranges, you get everything that was posted during that time frame, whether it was posted to June or July.  Use the Closing Selection prompt in conjunction with the appropriate Period prompt selection(s) to ensure you are getting only the data you want.

Fiscal Year End OBI Drop In Sessions

This 1-hour session is designed for you to get 1-on-1 help with OBI: answering questions, saving displays as customizations, etc. The upcoming Drop In session is July 13th from 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.  You can attend in person at 8 Story Street, Room B2, Cambridge or virtually via WebEx.  To insure that we have adequate resources available at these sessions, we are asking for you to register for the session if you plan to attend. You can register HERE.

Additional Resources for OBI

For requests for enhancements to OBI, please email: huit-dms-obi-request@harvard.edu

See also: Live, OBIEE, June 2018