January, 2016
From the Editor
I have rearranged the newsletter this month by moving training opportunities to the top slot. I want to emphasize training and, in particular, I want to draw your attention to four upcoming intermediate-level workshops: Grants Management reporting, Funds Management reporting, HCM Master Data reporting, and a new workshop that is devoted to viewing Concur expense data in a BW report. Take a moment to read the descriptions and consider joining me (and, in most cases, a representative from a central business area) for one or more of these sessions.
As always, I hope you find this issue of the Newsletter informative. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Bill Stewart
Training Calendar
January/February Training Opportunities
Upcoming Intermediate-level Workshops
Grant Management Reporting – jointly led by Shelly Stewardson and Bill. Note that the first two scheduled sessions filled up quickly, so a third session has been added; seats are still available as of this writing
Funds Management Reporting – jointly led by Meghan Tracy and Bill; sessions scheduled for both the Medical and Charles River campuses
HCM Employee Model Reporting – available to Payroll Coordinators and Managers, the reports examined in this workshop provide access to vast amounts of master data and enable users to develop answers to their various personnel administration and organizational management questions.
Using BW to View Concur Expense Data *New* – this session is intended for anyone with access to Funds Management reports who wants to view Concur expense data in a BW report. We will be joined by Montanna Freeman from Travel Services, who can provide additional insight into the Concur system.
Introductory Workshops offered this month
As always, an assortment of introductory workshops will be offered. These sessions present to new employees – or employees assigned a new business role – the fundamentals of reporting for a particular subject area. The sessions are a great way to review material, too. Even if you previously attended an intro session, you are likely to learn new things about reporting – or to be reminded of concepts that you had forgotten.
Click on any of the following links for a course description and/or to register for an upcoming session:
Supplier Resource Management Reporting
Labor Distribution (Payroll) Reporting
Tips & Tricks
Some of these Tips may be new to you, while others may be familiar. Regardless, we hope you find value in these and future Tips, even if we do no more than remind you of the existence of tools you once knew about but had since forgotten.
Note: all of the Tips posted in BW newsletters are archived on this page.
Saved Views – Beware Static Data!
Saving a view (the layout of a report you have customized) is a real time saver and is unquestionably one of the most powerful and heavily-used features of the Business Warehouse. The process of creating and using a view is described in this Help Guide: How to – Save and Use a View.
When it comes to running one of your saved views – if it contains a filter – it’s important to exercise care. Depending upon how the filter was applied, it’s possible your view may not display data added to the warehouse after you saved your view. Consider these use-cases:
1. You created a view that displays all of your department’s limit orders for the current fiscal year. In the process of setting up the view, you applied a filter to select all limit orders that were in effect when you saved the view. The problem is that, if you create any limit orders after the date on which the view was saved, the new limit orders will not be included. That is, your view is based on a static list of data. To avoid this problem, you will need to reapply the filter each time you run the view to be sure any new limit orders have been included.
2. The technique outlined for identifying Concur data in a BW report includes a step in which all active Concur expense items are selected in a filter. If you save your customized report as a view, it will be based on a static list of account numbers. The next time you run your view, you must be careful to update the filter with Concur account numbers that are in effect at that time.
3. Using the GM Budget vs. Actuals report, you create a view to display all of the active grants that you are responsible for. You can achieve this by setting a filter that excludes any grant with a closed status. In this case, your view will always show only your active awards; even if a grant is closed after the date on which you saved the view, the filter to exclude closed grants will correctly apply. That is, the filter you applied is dynamic.
The moral of the story? If your view contains one or more filters, you must be aware of whether those filters are static or dynamic. If they are static, you will have to reapply them in order to see all of your data whenever you again run the view.
Concur Expense Reports: Adding Useful Descriptive Text
A common complaint I hear is that, once BW report users have followed the instructions in the Help Guide How to View Concur Expense Activity in a BW Report, they still don’t see enough detail to help them determine what event some transactions are tied to. Here’s an important tip that should help with this problem: the Report Name field in a Concur report is used to populate the Text field in the BW Transaction Detail report (this is the report used in the how-to guide mentioned previously). The Report Name field, then, is where you should add any descriptive text you will need to understand the reason for an expense item when later reviewing data in your BW report. Refer to the Help Guide for full details on how to view Concur activity using a BW report.
Want to know more? Join us at the upcoming training session, Using BW to View Concur Expense Data, in which we will go through the steps you need to follow to view your Concur data.
End Notes
Have you ever thought that it would be really useful if you could get members of your department together with a trainer to focus on BUworks functionality that is specific to the work your department does? I’m happy to work with any department or group that would like to develop and conduct a custom basic- or intermediate-level reporting training session. There are only two requirements for such a session: (1) input from the group is necessary to develop a relevant agenda, and (2) the group should include four or more employees. If you’re interested in discussing the development of a custom session for your department or school/college, contact me via email or give me a call at 617-353-6382.
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