The Department of FISCal is continuing to work on expanding departments’ ability to explore, analyze and report their own insights and trends from data. With Microsoft Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics, we have developed new commitment control dashboards and reports, as well as a budget-to-actuals report. We will roll these out this month; department liaisons should see an email with instructions for providing access to staff sometime next week.
In addition to the reports, FI$Cal has built a data extracts database in Microsoft Azure, which is updated nightly. Departments now using FI$Cal data extracts are being transitioned to these new data extracts. The new process is easier for FI$Cal to update and maintain. The Azure database also serves as the source for the data in the Power BI reports, ensuring that the data is consistent across these delivery methods.
To provide further flexibility, we are working on providing access to some departmental users so they can build their own Power BI reports on the data that FI$Cal supplies. This will allow departments to design department-specific versions of reports if the standard FI$Cal-designed reports don’t meet their needs. Expect this capability to arrive for a limited number of users later this year.
Users can learn a lot more about how Power BI can help them by tuning in to next week’s FI$CalTv webcast. Host Jim Caselli will be interviewing Tom Marez, who manages the General Ledger (GL) subject matter experts at FI$Cal. He will have his team of subject matter experts on hand to explain how it all works. Tom will take viewers through two new job aids, and viewers will get a chance to ask questions of the experts.
FI$Cal plans to build more PeopleSoft reports and queries going forward, and viewer questions and feedback are critical in helping determine what is needed.
Here are the login instructions for the FI$CalTv August episode, which will air Thursday, August 27, at 1:30 p.m. To enter the event:
- Click here.
- In the “Join Event Now” field, enter your information as instructed. The event password should be prepopulated, but if not enter F$0827.
- Select “Join Now.”
- If prompted to run the temporary WebEx application, select “Run.”
- When prompted to connect audio, select “User Computer for Audio.”
- Click “Join Meeting.”
Past episodes of FI$CalTv shows are always available on the FI$Cal YouTube channel.