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OBIEE Updates

July 12, 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 June 2018

  • 99.2%: Percentage of queries that completed in 1 minute or under (up 0.1% since May!!!)
  • 1,501: Number of distinct users in OBI for ALL subject areas
  • 207,382: Number of distinct requests made in ALL subject areas (up by ~25,000 queries since May!)
    • The “Transaction Listing All” dashboard alone continues to make up almost half of all the requests at the university (94,517 requests). 

Monthly OBI Release

During this critical Fiscal Year End reporting period, there will be no OBI release in July.

The next OBI release will begin on Thursday, August 23rd at 6 p.m.  All changes will be implemented and the release complete by 9 a.m. on Friday, August 24th.  Check out the newly updated OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page for details of the dashboard changes in this release.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.  Additionally at this time of year, the additional usage and volume of reports can cause a strain on OBI.  Here's how to make your Fiscal Year End reporting using Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) a little bit easier.

  • Log Out
    • There are many inactive users in the system, which is causing the system to work harder.
    • Before you close your browser to end your OBI session, click Sign Out in the upper right corner, above your HUID, to log yourself out.
    • If your system has been inactive for 30 minutes or more, you may have been timed out. Please check out the OBI Time Out Job Aid for next steps.
       
  • Review the OBI Fiscal Year End Tips Job Aid
    • This job aid has a lot of good information that will help you optimize your prompts to get results quicker and easier.
    • The prompts do work differently during fiscal year end, so I can't stress reviewing the OBI Fiscal Year End Tips Job Aid enough.
       
  • Review the OBI General Performance Tips FAQ
    • This job aid has information about how to use OBI in general so that you can get the results you want faster.
       
  • Refresh Your Browser
    • Due to an increase in the amount of users running reports in OBI in the last couple weeks, some users have received error messages saying that the system/server is temporarily unavailable.  DMS has implemented some changes to OBI that should alleviate this issue.
    • If you receive such a message, a workaround is to simply click the refresh button for your web browser.  Doing so will bring you back to where you were last logged into OBI.  Please note: it may take a few clicks over a minute or two. Please log a Service Desk ticket (see below) if you do receive such an error message.
  • Log Service Desk Tickets
    • ​​​​​​​ If you are experiencing any issues with OBI, we do encourage you to submit a Service Desk ticket. If you email huit-dms-obi-help@harvard.edu the ticket will come directly to DMS so that we can help you faster.
    • Whether you email IT Help or huit-dms-obi-help@harvard.edu, please include 1) the specific nature of the issue, 2) screenshots you can provide, and 3) a bookmark link or the prompts for the dashboard you are trying to run. This information will help us to answer your question faster.

Fiscal Year End OBI Drop In Sessions

This 1-hour session is designed for you to get 1-on-1 help with OBI: answering your questions, saving displays as customizations, etc. The upcoming Drop In session is this Friday, 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

See also: Live, Reporting (Financial), July 2018