1. Administering Analytics and Reports for HCM
  2. HCM Subject Areas for Transactional Business Intelligence

HCM Subject Areas for Transactional Business Intelligence

To create a real-time analysis using Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence, begin by selecting a subject area. Then, select columns of information to include in the analysis.

Information in OTBI is grouped into subject areas. Subject areas are based around a business object or fact.

For example, to create an analysis of salary information, you begin by selecting a Compensation subject area.

Transactional Business Intelligence includes subject areas for:

  • Absences

  • Benefits

  • Compensation

  • Environment Health and Safety

  • Goals

  • Payroll

  • Performance

  • Profiles

  • Succession

  • Talent review

  • Workforce management

Subject areas for Transactional Business Intelligence always include the suffix, Real Time.

Fact Folders and Dimension Folders

The information in a subject area is centered on a fact and that fact is joined to several dimensions. The subject area as a whole enables you to report on that fact, so, subject areas are named after their facts. Each subject area has one fact folder and a number of dimension folders. Fact folders contain attributes that can be measured, meaning that they're numeric values like headcount and salary. A special folder, called a degenerate dimension, is also associated with the fact folder. Each dimension folder is joined to the fact folder within a subject area. Fact folders are usually below the list of folders and are usually named after the subject area.

Some folders appear in more than one subject area, such as Grade, Department, and Job. These are referred to as common folders or common dimensions.

Each fact has a different level of granularity. For example:

  • Worker Assignment has one row for every assignment.

  • Worker Assignment Event has one row for each assignment event, such as hire and transfer, which means there are multiple rows for each assignment.

  • Absence has one row for each absence

Data Security in Subject Areas

Data security is usually applied to the fact in a subject area. The security that is applied is exactly the same as that within the transactional system. Hence, a manager will only see the headcount or FTE for the workers that their Fusion security will allow them to see. Most dimensions are unsecured, the exception being the Assignment Manager dimension (or hierarchy). This dimension will only allow a user to report on themselves and anyone below them in the line manager assignment hierarchy.

Reporting Across Subject Areas

You can report from two or more facts (each fact is in a different subject area) if the dimensions used in the report are common to both subject areas. Such dimensions are known as conformed dimensions. It is not possible to report across subject areas if even one dimension is unique to only one of the subject areas (a local dimension). Such reports will result in an ODBC error. Most of the subject areas will join to other subject areas via conformed dimensions. The exception is the Person subject area that is not designed to join to any other subject area.

Example: You would like to report on the headcount and total salary for each of your departments. Salary and headcount are two different facts and therefore exist in two different subject areas. Therefore it is necessary to report across those two subject areas. Department is common to both subject areas and so this report will run successfully. If Salary Basis is added to the report, then it will fail because there is no way to join headcount to salary basis. Salary basis is a local dimension in the salary subject area.

If you have to create a report from two subject areas, you need to add a metric from each of the subject areas.

Example: "Workforce Management - Worker Assignment Real Time"."Worker Assignment"."Head Count" and "Workforce Management - Absence Real Time"."Assignment Absences"."# Of Absences". Head Count and # Of Absences are the metrics used here.

To find the list of reports that use a particular subject area, you can use the OTBI Usage Real Time subject area. This subject area has the reports and the report query text that you could filter.

Folders and Flattened Hierarchies

Some folders contain flattened hierarchies. For example, the manager and department hierarchies are flattened, which means that the transactional system contains:

  • One record that indicates that John is Claire's manager.

  • Another record that indicates that Claire is James's manager.

The hierarchy has both a record containing John - Claire - James, and another one with Claire - James. If John signs in, he uses the former, if Claire signs in, she uses the latter record.

For detailed information about HCM subject areas, see Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud Subject Areas for Transactional Business Intelligence in HCM.

Reporting Across Subject Areas in BI Publisher

You can report subject areas in BI Publisher by creating joins between subject areas. You will need the BI Administration role in order to create a BI Publisher Data Model. There can be two types of join:

Element Level: This is an equal join linking columns. Allows only return data that exists in both sides of the join.

Group Level: Allows outer joins - rows that exist in one side of the join will be reported even if they don’t join to rows on the other side.

To create a simple analysis to view the performance document questionnaire or any survey responses answers document, you can select a measure related to that section. This gives OTBI an ability to form a query appropriate to section reporting.

Example: "Workforce Performance - Performance Rating Real Time".."- Performance Rating"."Average Section Rating". You can hide the newly added attribute using Answer's column properties.