New Financial Tableau Data Sources (RAE-powered)

With the completion of the financial conversion data loads to Workday, the team responsible for the Reporting and Analytics Environment (RAE) has also completed the loading of financial data to the new analytics data lake. As of Monday February 1, the RAE is synchronized with Workday via data loads that push the most recent transactions into the analytics database each night. We have also completed the first round of data copies from legacy systems that are being retired, including the analytics databases that are used with eReports and BuckIQ reports. These initial copies were taken on January 9, 2021. 

New Tableau Data Sources (TDS): 

To facilitate ad-hoc financial reporting, we have created three new Tableau Data Sources that live on top of the datasets that have been loaded to the RAE. Users that have completed Tableau Desktop or Tableau Web Authoring training will be able to use these types of data sources to create ad-hoc financial analyses via self-service. 

We have created the following TDS:

• PS Historical FIN Mart - Monthly Summaries
• PS Historical FIN Mart - Transaction Detail
• Workday FIN Mart - Journal Line Detail

The first two data sources are powered by a copy of the soon-to-be-retired Peoplesoft-based financial data mart. As we mentioned above, these data marts are primarily used as sources for eReports and BuckIQ reports today. These marts utilize the legacy chart of accounts methodology for reporting on data (not FDM), thus the contents will be very familiar to financial analysts. The information in these data sources are current as of January 9, 2021. We will be refreshing these with updated copies in February, March, and April. Once the Peoplesoft systems are taken completely offline, these datasets will become static copies. 

The third data source was created using financial data from Workday. This TDS contains information that was converted from Peoplesoft to Workday, as well as data for new transactions that have been moved into the new financial systems since January 2021. Reporting slicing and dicing of data within the data source can be conducted using Workday worktags and the FDM categorization of data. This data source is updated nightly from Workday, thus will always be one day behind the LIVE information within the transactional system. 

Access: 

These new Tableau Data Sources have been classified under the Finance and Supply Chain – Financial Accounting / General Ledger domain. Users that have been granted access to these data sources will navigate to them in Tableau by following this path within Tableau Server: 

Enterprise > Finance and Supply Chain > Financial Accounting / General Ledger > [Data Sources] 

If you do not have access to this area of Tableau, you can request Reporting Access using the Requesting Access to Enterprise Data for Analytics guide within the Administrative Resource Center (ARC).   

Usage: 

Who should use these data sources? 

Remember: A financial analyst’s first choice for accessing data should be Workday reports. Workday data is LIVE and continually updated throughout the day. There are many reports that have been made available in Workday to cover the majority of your data and reporting needs. For more information about the reports that are available in Workday, please consult with your financial leadership team and refer to the Available Reports and Reporting Crosswalk information from the Administrative Resources Center (ARC).   

There are cases and scenarios where a financial analyst may need to use a more flexible ad-hoc data exploration tool such as Tableau. These new data sources are targeted for those use cases. By using Tableau Desktop or Tableau Web Authoring, analysts can “drag and drop” to find the answers and analyses they need. Users that would like to work with these data sources should have some familiarity with Tableau workbook development. For more details, please review Tableau information at the data.osu.edu site.   

If you have questions or concerns about these new analytics data sources, please reach out to us at: CIO-RAE-Admin@osu.edu