OneStream - Piece by Piece

The core learning comes from first understanding the OneStream artifacts (the individual objects or components that make up the platform). A combination of these artifacts completes your application or solution (used, for example, to consolidate or plan). Or take advantage of OneStream’s solution exchange portal where there are numerous use cases that have the artifacts already pieced together readily available to download.

Like any jigsaw puzzle, the box cover has the whole picture so you can see what the result will look like. Once opened you can lay out all the pieces on the table and study each individual tile to understand where each one fits in the bigger picture.

Here is OneStream’s front cover of some of the artifacts:

Here are the main pieces now laid out on the table:

Dimensions : Classed as metadata, these are a set of related members. Each member in a dimension is an item name that labels, so to speak, the data it represents. So, if our dimension has been called Fruit, the members inside it could be named Oranges, Apples, Grapes, and Peaches, and the data for each item could point to unit sales.

Dimensions are built per dimension type as follows:

Entity Dimension: The organization’s business areas used for statutory or management reporting.

Scenario Dimension: A version of data that can reflect various Scenario Types such as Actual, Budget, or Forecast.

Account Dimension: The structure representing the organization’s chart of accounts, both financial and non-financial members.

Flow Dimension: Set up to provide the movements and details on how account values change over time.

User Defined (UD) Dimension: The ability to create hierarchies that can be used to analyze a report further, such as products, regions, or cost centers.

Parent: Resides within the Entity dimension and provides the mechanism to further break down an entity’s business area.

Intercompany: Determines which entities within the Entity dimension trade in the group and are involved with intercompany activity.

Time Dimension: Data can be stored and reported at weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly levels.

Consolidation Dimension: Provides the analysis of rolled-up data from its local currency to translation, share, elimination, adjustments, and final value in the parent entity’s member.

Origin Dimension: Identifies the data’s origin with an import, form entry, or journal adjustment.

View Dimension: Shows the data from different perspectives, for example, year-to-date, month-to-date, or quarter-to-date.

Cube: A collection of relevant dimensions to form a multi-dimensional financial model that has data for analyzing and reporting.

FX Rates: The currency codes used for currency exchange rates.

Import: A mapping setup of the source file to the target cube for the purpose of loading data.

Forms: A manual (or import option if required) way of entering data into sheets for the purpose of collating values. For example, headcount.

Journals: Adjustments to the loaded data, providing governance of when and who performed the adjustment. As well as manually creating the journal, there is also an import feature that is able to create the journal using an Excel or Comma Separated Values file.

Transformation Rules: The rules behind which source items map to which target items.

Confirmation Rules: A developer-built data quality check feature to prevent continuation of the workflow until all is acceptable. For example, the balancing of a balance sheet.

Certification Questions: Use of a questionnaire to sign off on data as acceptable.

Cube Views: The main building blocks for reports and dashboards, used to display and/or enter cube data.

Dashboards: Developers design dashboards to display data in a user-friendly manner and can set them to be an end-user’s landing page, Workspace in a workflow, or a series of guided reporting selections.

Spreadsheets: A spreadsheet workbook directly connected to OneStream data that can be displayed and updated in real time.

Report Books: A combination of different report types to form a report pack that can be distributed to stakeholders.

Extensible Documents: A blend of OneStream content with Microsoft content that references OneStream data.

Workflow: A guided approach for users to complete specific assigned tasks at specific times.

Security: A way to permit users to only access objects relevant to their tasks in OneStream

The OneStream fundamentals book extends further on all the above pieces and is the concise starter guide for anyone new to corporate performance management and specifically the OneStream world.  It will take you through OneStream’s journey that will be your road map to understanding the platforms metadata, data import, calculations, workflow, reporting topics and much more …

Enjoy!