OBIEE = Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

OBIEE provides summary information on SSC/Oracle Finances, including project expenditure and STFC manpower use. OBIEE information is updated daily.

 Select MI STFC PA Projects (read only)  Then click on "STFC Projects" in the blue band at the top of the page

Financial Information

This provides info about expenditure across the whole of a Project, combining Tasks (cf. “STFC PA Project Enquiry”, which operates only at the Task level.)

1) Select tab labelled Project & Task Performance at top of page. 2) In the blue box, specify the “Project Number” (click on small box with “....”), choose the time period in which you are interested, and click “Go”. 3) Ensure “Cost Type” = “Cost” so that the results shown at the bottom of the page include overheads. 4) Results are shown by Task. Click on any number in the “Cost” column to see the breakdown for that Task. More details can be found by clicking again on the “Cost” for each item. Warning: In the “Cost” column, credits are not shown as negative numbers, but instead as numbers in brackets. Then click on the Project code to get more details. 5) Optionally click “download” at the bottom of the page to save an Excel sheet etc. 6) When finished, click “return” at the bottom of the page.

STFC Effort Bookings – Oracle Time and Labour = OTL

This information is only as reliable as people’s booking habits – a good reason for checking the info.

To check time bookings and corresponding costs:

1) Select tab labelled OTL Effort & Costs at top of page. 2) In the blue box, specify the “Project Number” (click on small box with “....”), choose the time period in which you are interested, and click “Go”. 3) Click link “STFC effort and costs -- project centred”. 4) Set “View” = “Pivot Table”. 5) When finished, click “return” at the bottom of the page.

To check if STFC staff have forgotten to book their time:

1) Select tab labelled OTL Timesheets at top of page. 2) In the blue box, specify the “Organisation Name”, for example “STFC – ATLAS”, choose the time period in which you are interested, and click “Go”. 3) The table shows the fraction of their time in each week for which people accounted. It should be 1.00 (green) for people who are full time. 4) When finished, click “return” at the bottom of the page. N.B. Warning: “STFC – ATLAS” in step (2) selects only people historically, mainly associated with ATLAS, so you may need to also look for individuals by specifying “person name” in step (2). Also people may work on multiple projects; there is no guarantee all their effort is in the specified project. To see details of an individual’s effort across different projects:

i. Click on the person’s name ii. “Choose date grouping” as “Fiscal year”.

OBIEE Generalities

The first time that you do any of the above, it is recommended to save the options you specified in the “blue box” for future use. Do this by:

1) Click “Page Options”, then “Save current selections”, then “For me”. 2) Next time, you can replace the “blue box” step with “Page Options”, then “Apply saved selection”.

Watch the use of dates. Often best to use “Fiscal Year”: this corresponds to the date when transactions were recorded in Oracle – this is what actually constitutes your in-year spend (“2011” corresponds to FY 2011-12). “Dates” correspond to when a transaction actually took place. The danger of “Dates” is that some transactions may have occurred in the previous FY, yet be debited/credited in the current year and count against spend in the current year.

Note that the saved options are specific to the tab (e.g. “OTL Effort & Costs” or “Project Task & Performance”) that you used them for.

Generally best to use “return” at the bottom of page to return – browser “back arrow” tends to screw up.

It is often useful to “download” the information to Excel – this captures all the information, not just the first page.

Written by Ian Tomalin. Modified by Stephen Haywood – 4 Nov 2011.