Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) is a suite of reporting and analysis tools in an easy to use interface. It is the most commonly used reporting tool at Stanford, enabling high quality business decisions through an integrated set of reporting and analysis capabilities. 

OBI has one reporting interface, with a common data foundation. Dashboard users can quickly navigate across intuitive subject areas, drill into transaction details and save customizations. Data is integrated, consistent and accurate.

BI Publisher (BIP) reports have also been created for a limited number of special cases (primarily mimicking the previous reporting system for backwards compatibility). These reports are not drillable or customizable but can be scheduled while dashboards cannot. Refer to OBI Guide: Scheduling BI Publisher Report Jobs for more information.

 OBI delivers the right tool to the right people with the right skill level:

  • Report Viewer authority: Pre-defined and interactive reports for administrative and financial staff, supporting customization and saving of customized reports.
  • Intermediate Ad Hoc authority: Robust and dynamic ad hoc analyses for budget officers and experienced financial analysts. Build reports from scratch and automate delivery.
Features Dashboard Ad Hoc BIP
Summarize and Pivot Data ✔ ✔ ✔
Change Sorts ✔ ✔  
Advanced Filters ✔ ✔ ✔
Alternate Views ✔ ✔ ✔
Drill to Detail ✔ ✔  
Save Customized Views ✔ ✔  
Share links to customized reports ✔ ✔  
Ad Hoc analyses   ✔  
Customize others analyses   ✔  
Advanced pivot of data   ✔  
Graphs Some ✔  
Create Custom Rollups   ✔  
Share custom analyses   ✔  
Calculated fields   ✔  
Schedule report delivery   ✔ ✔

Visit the Newsroom for recent announcements and subscribe to receive future OBI Reporting updates and enhancements. 

Gaining Access to OBI Financial Reporting

Before you can access financial reporting data using OBI, you must satisfy the following:

  1. Enroll in and complete the online Financial Confidentiality Agreement in STARS (FIN-PROG-0010).
  2. Complete required training within 9 months of grant. Refer to table in OBI Authority section for details. Status "pending prereqs" will stay stuck even when details show "Status Complete" if not completed within 9 months. The solution is to revoke the authority and immediately regrant.
  3. Your school or department must grant you OBI financial reporting authority using Authority Manager. Refer to the following for more information:

OBI Authority

OBI Reporting authority in Authority Manager is divided into two types:

Report Viewer Intermediate Ad Hoc

Learning required for access:

Learning required for access:
  • An introduction to the suite of OBI financial reports for all financial administrators and analysts
  • View all static and interactive reports delivered via OBI report catalogs and dashboards
  • Perform essential analysis through interactive reports using drill down and drill across functionality
  • Designed for experienced financial analysts whose job requires flexible and specific ad hoc financial analysis and reporting
  • Create customized analyses and share with other ad hoc users
  • Share analyses with non-ad hoc users via export to Excel, PDF or PPT

Select the link for more detailed information on OBI authority. Authority for OBI Financial Reporting is updated daily. Once you complete your training and new authority is granted, you should have access within 24 hours.

Course Required for Access? Description Prerequisite
FIN-0340: Introduction to OBI Financial Reporting Yes Introduction to the suite of OBI financial reports FIN-PROG-0010: Financial Confidentiality Agreement
FIN-0345: CER Dashboard Intermediate Workshop No Workshop covering intermediate aspects of the CER Dashboard. Includes moving columns to prompts and sections, using columns to create specialized reports, methods of exporting and using exported data. Practice getting the same data as the RM3 285 report. FIN-0340
FIN-0351: Introduction to Payroll and Labor Management Reporting Using OBI Recommended Explains how to run predefined PLM reports in OBI to answer common business questions, relationships to related ReportMart reports and how to utilize available support resources. FIN-0340
FIN-0355: OBI Financial Reporting – Consolidated Expenditure Reporting Dashboard Recommended Focuses on consolidated expenditures report data, dashboard navigation and running and modifying reports that answer common business questions FIN-0340

Once you have completed required training and your school or department grants you Report Viewer authority, you will receive access to all reports within the subject areas and limits of your authority.

If prerequisites are not completed within 300 days after grant, the Pending Prereqs flag will become stuck and can only be cleared by revoking and regranting the authority.

Course Required for Access? Description Prerequisite
FIN-0350: Creating Financial Analyses Using Oracle Business Intelligence Yes Designed for experienced financial analysts whose job requires flexible and efficient ad hoc financial analysis and reporting.

Once you have completed required training and your school or department grants you Intermediate Ad Hoc User authority, you will receive access to perform ad hoc analyses within the subject areas and limits of your authority. Identify authorized authority grantors.

If prerequisites are not completed within 300 days after grant, the Pending Prereqs flag will become stuck and can only be cleared by revoking and regranting the authority.

Webinars

How to Attend

  • No need to register, leave your desk, walk or drive. Attend these seminars virtually from your computer, tablet or mobile device.
  • If you haven't set up Zoom on your device, do it in advance. It's easy!
     
Date Title Description Links
2019-09-30
10-11 a.m. PST		 PLM Labor Schedule Trend
  • Using Labor Schedule Trend to:
  • Find incomplete schedules at a glance by viewing Work Assignment Org totals by person by pay period in a tabular view.
  • View by person, award, project and SPO number to verify schedules from various perspectives,
  • Drill on a person’s name to get full details for the full time range, including start and end dates, by PTA,
  • Drill on a pay period percentage to get full details for that person for that period,
  • Search by org, project, task, award, person and paycode group to support a wide variety of business processes including finding employees who do not belong to a position org or work assignment org for which you have authority whose expenditures will be charged to your PTAs.

Recorded Presentation

Presentation Slides

Chrome browser is recommended for viewing the OBI videos below.

General Skills Short Videos

Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER)

Training tool examples of using the CER dashboard report tabs:

Video examples of specific uses cases in CER:

Procure to Pay (P2P) Report Tab

Video examples of running reports:

Revenue and Fund Management (RFM) Report Tab Videos

Video examples of running reports:

Authority

For information about authority assignments by person, privilege or organizational perspective as well as privileges granted by an individual and grantors by privilege refer to:

Financial Reporting Directory (FRD)

The Financial Reporting Directory (FRD) displays and can launch the financial reporting dashboards and their associated reports. Central administration reports are also available through this directory.  

Consolidate Expenditure Reporting (CER)

For information about Consolidated Expenditure Reporting, including the Expenditure Statement from Oracle Grants Accounting data, iJournals, Consolidated Budget (Hyperion/Tidemark), iBudgets, GA Budgets and Hard Commitments, refer to:

Expense Requests and SU Card Activity (ERR)

For information about Expense Requests system transaction details (e.g., expense reports or reimbursements, advances, non-PO payments, petty cash replenishments), historical iOU transactions and Stanford credit card transactions (TCard and PCard), refer to:

Expense Request Efficacy (ERE)

For information about expense request processing including processing times, approvals and rejection rates, approval aging and status for assessing process flow efficiency, refer to:

Payroll and Labor Management (PLM)

For information about payroll and labor management including salary, labor schedules, labor distribution adjustments, timecards, leave and vacation liability, refer to:

Procure to Pay (P2P)

For information about purchase requisitions, purchase orders, Accounts Payable invoices, suppliers and supplier payments reporting, refer to:

Reference Data and Inquiry (INQ)

For information about expenditure types and object codes; project, task and award attributes; configuration and fund authorization; and stanford org hierarchy, refer to:

Revenue and Fund Management (RFM)

For information about revenue and fund management reporting including details on fund statements, journals, transfers, fund trends, trial balances, fund variances, budget variances, budget transactions, endowments and pledges, refer to:

Questions?

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