Functional Configurations for OBIA Financial Analytics

This is a continuation of articles under OBIA.In the previous article I had mentioned about domain load. Once the domain load is complete the next step is to complete the set of tasks for the implementation module selected. This can be accomplished either through BIACM or FSM.

                      

Some of the important configurations to be completed for financials are:

Data load Parameters

 Data load parameters are used to control the nature of data loaded from the transactional system into the Business Analytics Warehouse. Fo financial analytics implementation 3 keys configurations are :

FSG enabled

Oracle provides the FSG hierarchy dimensions and you can view it from the seeded RPD in BMM layer.If you are not planning to load the FSG tables (GL Hierarchy tables) it is advisable to leave this option set to N. If not data load will take much longer to complete with FSG enabled. Some of the tables loaded for FSG are:

W_GL_ACCOUNT_DH

W_ORA_GL_HIER_AXCONTENT_DH_TMP

W_ORA_GL_HIER_DH_TMP

W_ORA_GL_HIER_NORM_HIER_DH_TMP

W_ORA_GL_HIER_RGE_DERV_DH_TMP

W_ORA_GL_HIER_CCID_DH_TMP

W_ORA_GL_HIER_CCID_REF_DH_TMP

The temporary table has to be set to a greater value since the ETL process with FSG consumes more table space.Here is a screen shot of the FSG hierarchy dimension provided by oracle.

Some customizations to RPD and dashboards would be needed to bring over those dimensions to get FSG report in BI.

Fed financial enabled

This option is for federal financials and it is suggested to turn it off if not using since the ETL is going to go over the packages related to Federal financials.

Initial extract date

It determines the date from which the data from the source system has to be loaded into your warehouse tables.

 Reporting parameters

Some of the reporting parameters are to be set for financials analytics though it may seem to belong to other modules. This is defined in the task list as well.Master Organization, inventory caterogy set, purchasing category set are some of the reporting columns . If you do not have these setup, during the financial data load fails since product and inventory dimension tables are loaded. Now for such configurations you would need input from your inventory control SMEs.

An important note on Product Category Sets:Product category set having multiple categories assigned for an item is not supported. It causes duplicates in Product Dimensions during data load of financial module.

Domain Mappings and hierarchies

Group Account Configuration.

Domains are pre-seeded dimensional values that help define business metrics. For example, the data in domain Source Group Account (BI_GROUP_ACCOUNT) extracts and loads into the domain Group Account (W_GL_GROUP_ACCOUNT).

Group Account Number Configuration is an important step in the configuration of Financial Analytics, because it determines the accuracy of the majority of metrics in the General Ledger and Profitability module.

 

Group account to financial statement Item

By mapping your GL accounts against the group account numbers and then associating the group account number to a Financial Statement Item code, you have indirectly associated the GL account numbers to Financial Statement Item codes as well. This association is important to perform GL reconciliation and to ensure the subledger data reconciles with GL journal entries.

For example, when processing a GL journal that charges to a GL account which is associate to 'AP' Financial Statement Item code, then the ETL process will try to go against AP base fact table (W_AP_XACT_F), and try to locate the corresponding matching AP accounting entry. If that GL account is associated with the 'REVENUE' Financial Statement Item code, then the ETL program will try to go against the Revenue base fact table (W_GL_REVN_F), and try to locate the corresponding matching Revenue accounting entry.

 

Why we cannot extend the target domain codes.

Since BIAPPS product supports multiple source systems – that have a set of values which will cater to all sources and those are the conformed domains. Financial Statement Item codes are internal codes used by the ETL process to process the GL journal records during the GL reconciliation process against the subledgers.

In the next article I will continue on full data load

Oracle Business Intelligence Applications(OBIA)11.1.1.8.1 with ODI

What is OBIA

Oracle BI Applications is a suite of prebuilt business intelligence solutions that deliver role-based intelligence. Oracle BI Applications support prebuilt aggregation and analysis of information from a variety of transactional applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, as well as non-Oracle applications. These transactional applications are referred to source systems, because they provide the underlying data that source analyses.

 Business case for OBIA

In the above introduction it is mentioned BI solution is pre built and it means:

• A prebuilt data warehouse schema, the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse, with associated extract, transform, and load (ETL) metadata and data-movement infrastructure to support aggregation and transformation for the analysis of data from all transactional sources.
• A pre-built Oracle BI Applications metadata repository to support analysis of the data in the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse.
• A suite of metrics pertaining to how organizations measure performance that your company can select from and apply to your particular line of business.

Benefits of a packaged application are quicker time to deploy, less overall cost, an enterprise view of data, role-based views for all employees, and built-in best practices. For any organization or company  who own the transactional source system of Oracle Ebusiness Suite,Siebel,PeopleSoft ,JDEdwards  OBIA can drastically reduce the time and cost to deploy a BI solution It also provides the flexibility to introduce and implement the analytics one module at a time, for eg: You can implement Financials and then move on HR analytics.

OBIA ERP Analytics consists of the following modules:

Oracle Financial Analytics

Oracle U.S. Federal Financial Analytics

Oracle Human Resources Analytics

Oracle Manufacturing Analytics

Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics

Oracle Project Analytics

Oracle Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics

Oracle Student Information Analytics

OBIA Version

I will be going over the new release of OBIA 11.1.1.7.1/11.1.1.8.1 with ODI.  Earlier version that is OBIA  7.9.6 had Informatica as its ETL architecture. The topics I will be covering will be based only the new release of OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 and not an upgrade from 7.9.6 .

The oracle site has only 11.1.1.8.1 for download .So I will be referring to only 11.1.1.8.1 installation and configuration steps. The upgrade path from 11.1.1.7.1 to 11.1.1.8.1 is available on the OTN site. Both have the same BI components but the latest version 11.1.1.8.1 has some bug fixes and enhancements to 11.1.1.7.1 version.

The most significant difference between OBIA 11.1.1.7.1 and 11.1.1.8.1 that I have noticed are

• New Data Lineage Tool allows customers and implementers to track lineage from source to target - improving information transparency across their enterprise 
• Configuration Management expands System Setup and Load Plan definition capabilities, including the registration of multiple instances for the same Product Line Version, UI enhancements to support DW connection configuration and Load Plan definition, and Load Plan definition migration

The different components of OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 are

• Admin console
• BIACM(Business Intelligence Applications Configuration Manager)
• FSM(Functional Setup Manager)
• ODI Console(Oracle Data Integrator Console)
• RPD(Repository)
• Catalog

Success Factors for implementing OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 with ODI Successful BI implementation is a collaborative effort of functional and technical teams in an organization. BI implementation is successful and useful only when the data on the dashboards are meaningful.  And when does data become meaningful in dashboards?  Look at the diagram below:

This diagram depicts the different components that are responsible for the display of meaningful data on your dashboards. Functional configurations is an important task at each and every stage of BI implementation since accurate configurations and mappings translate to accurate data on dashboards. These steps need input from the subject matter experts (SMEs) or the super users of your transactional source system to get the data right. And when the technical folks show the BIACM and FSM UIs to functional SMEs for their input, the questions they would be asked are:

• This UI does not make sense.
• What is all that Mapping about?
• Why you need that input?

The answer that would help:

These functional setups, based on either business requirements or on transactional source system settings or configurations, direct the manner in which relevant data is moved and transform d from source database to target database. Functional setups are also called functional configurations which provides accurate and successful movement of data from (source system) EBS to (database to target Business Analytics Warehouse) Dashboard and they Control the manner in which data is displayed.

 Implementation Phases of OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 with ODI

I will be going over the implementation phases for Oracle BI Applications. A typical product lifecycle consists of the following process, some of which may happen concurrently.

• Installation
• OBIA architecture and components
• Configurations
• Data Load-Domain Load/Data Load/Incremental Load/Issues in Data Load
• Customization to RPD
• Customization to Dashboards
• Migration