In part three of our three-year look back at Tableau series, we’ll learn more about how the increased use of Tableau and the collaboration it affords has led to an actual Tableau community at Ohio State. Read more.
News: Data and Analytics
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Workday Journal Line Reload Week of April 5
In the coming weeks, the Data and Analytics team within the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI) will be reloading the core Journal Line dataset from Workday into the Reporting and Analytics Environment (RAE), starting with January 2021 data and finishing through current day.
Starting the week of April 5, 2022, we will be working behind the scenes to reload data to the RAE, beginning with January 2021 and then forward. The reload process is expected to be complete no later than April 15, 2022. We will load the data incrementally in monthly buckets due to the size of the files. Thus, during this 10-day period, updates will appear as the load steps complete.
There will be no system outage or downtime due to this work. Users, reports, and dashboards should not be affected. Updated and complete data will flow into your existing queries without any changes on your part. Once the reload is complete, we will send out a follow up notification.
Reload Highlights:
Over the past few months, we have been working with the OTDI team supporting Workday, as well as key partners in colleges and units to remedy a few data issues that have been identified in the RAE dataset. This reload will correct these issues back to the launch of Workday (January 2021), and we have new data load processes in place to keep the data complete going forward.
This reload will affect the following datasets in the RAE and Tableau:
- RAE Table - data_wday_slv.fact_journal_line
- Tableau Data Source â Workday FIN Mart - Journal Line Detail
Issues fixed by the data reload:
- Timeout issues - Due to the large size of the journal line feed, some data loads were timing out which resulted in delays with getting current data into the RAE, followed by a manual run/fix to correct the issue. We’ve partnered with the OTDI Integrations team and moved to a more stable process to get this massive amount of data loaded to the RAE each day without timing out.
- Journal line issues - Journal lines associated with ADHOC PAYEE worktags or having blank Budget Date fields were not being loaded to the RAE.
- Position level detail - Journal line data is currently being loaded at a payroll summary level (not down to the employee/position level). We’ve added a new feed to load the position level detail for payroll journal line data. Note, this will also result in the creation of a new Workday Payroll Detail Journal Line Tableau Data Source.
Finally, we wanted to give a shout out to all the data analysts, report developers, integrations team members, and Business and Finance subject matter experts who helped identify, resolve, and validate the fixes for the issues mentioned. This is by far the biggest update to the RAE since go-live a year ago and we could not have made it to this point without the collective teamwork across so many groups. Thank you!
If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please do not hesitate to contact me directly or my team at: cio-rae-admin@osu.edu
Sincerely,
Lonnie Morgan Jr.
Senior Director of Data and Analytics
Data and Integration Services, Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI)
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Tableau Year 3 - Workday, Meet Tableau at Ohio State
Change is needed for any kind of growth or progress to happen, but as we know change is rarely easy. Part of our three-year look back at Tableau includes mention of the January 2021 Workday implementation at Ohio State and how Tableau lent a hand. Read more. -
Tableau Year 3 - Workday, Meet Tableau
Change is needed for any kind of growth or progress to happen, but as we know change is rarely easy. Part of our three-year look back at Tableau includes mention of the January 2021 Workday implementation at Ohio State and how Tableau lent a hand.
Bringing Workday to Ohio State represented a substantial level of change at the university, not seen in many years. And what people often forget is that Ohio State didn’t just choose to implement Workday and then change processes to fit the new system. Rather, the business areas knew that a leap was needed to evolve our aging systems and processes to function in a faster, more mobile, and information-on-demand world. Such a change required a complete business transformation and more supporting tools, in addition to just Workday.The university needed a new application to enable better reporting and data analytics along with the new Workday foundational system for financial and HR business transactions. Thankfully, through the Enterprise Project, Ohio State was able to leverage Tableau as a supporting partner.You may recall seeing the at-a-glance Enterprise Project metrics listed below as part of the Workday go-live recap. Notice that the bolded items call out specific contributions made by Tableau.50 Enterprise Tableau datasets created59 Process Blockers Resolved90 Enterprise Tableau dashboards created108 Change Coordinators Engaged for Go-Live Activities150 Systems Retired for Workday Release 1162 Non-project Employee Volunteers Facilitated Training250 Dashboards connected to Enterprise Tableau datasets358 System Integrations Built485 Job Aids and Training Courses Created884 Leadership Key Decisions Made9,726 Processes Tested and Validated6.5 million Data Conversions Made
Let's pause. We've seen a cute graphic representing the convergence of a new system along with improved data and analytics capabilities and now we're seeing some numbers. What's so important about the numbers with regard to Tableau? The 90 dashboards are important because they represent new reporting needs not offered by Workday or replicated reports from historical systems. Instead of users needing to run several reports in Workday and trying to "Frankenstein" them together, there is now one central trusted source in Tableau.Along the same lines, the 50 data sources are important because they support this central source of truth. The Data and Analytics team can build something (or replicate a historical data source) using these data sources. This supports not only the 90 dashboards mentioned prior, but users with specific access are also able to connect to those dashboards to build their own reports, hence the 250 connected dashboards.
We've now taken a journey and visited how Tableau provided a huge lift to the Enterprise Project followed by a look at how Tableau continues to build the relationship between systems and data going forward. Similar to how we concluded the prior three years of tableau post, let's close with end user testimonials. The question posted to users in the January survey was, "What is your Tableau success story?"
What is your Tableau success story?
Optimizing Workday
"Tableau does a great job supplementing reports not available in Workday."
Time savings
"Creation of several reports to save stakeholders time that had been spent compiling several different data points from Workday that can now be done in one automated report."
Collaboration
"Our faculty dashboards in Tableau have been widely used across campus and all our PeopleSoft historical reports are now in Tableau for the HR community to use."
Streamlining operations
"The Department of Internal Audit had an extensive process established prior to Workday to analyze data using an Audit Tool called ACL. With the transition Workday, we had to determine how best to transition defined recurring analysis we had built using PeopleSoft data sources. Hundreds of hours went into building out or ACL solution. We were able to transition key analysis in a fraction of the time using Tableau (using pre-built data sources or established connections to the RAE)."
If you have additional questions about the Tableau service, please contact Jimmy Anthony and Maureen Henry.
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Tableau Year 3 - Supporting the Ohio State Pandemic Response
Welcome to the first installment of the Three Years of Tableau blog series. In February, an initial overview was shared highlighting Tableau use over the past three years at Ohio State, along with findings from a January 2022 survey. With this blog series, we’ll dig a little more and share some user testimonials. Read more.
