12 Best Practices

Main Section	Sub Section	Best Practice Description	Scenarios
Application Portal
Controls	Central Currency	Activate the Central Currency function only if necessary, as once the feature is activated, it cannot be reversed or deactivated.	1. If all properties and the Corporate Office use the same currency, do NOT activate feature. 2. If all properties use the same currency but the Corporate Office uses a different currency, activate feature. 3. If all/some properties use different currencies and the Corporate Office needs reports that utilize a single currency, activate feature.
Controls	Object Storage	Administrators should regenerate the APP secret(password) annually as a standard procedure.
Controls	SFTP	When utilizing SFTP, enable resend functionality.	When using bursting for BIP reports, enabling the resend functionality will provide redundancy in report delivery in case it fails for unforeseen reasons.
Controls	Service Account	Always create a service account and associate in the application portal.	SFTP resend functionalities require use of a Service Account and if the service account is absent, SFTP resend function cannot be enabled.
Groups	Custom Groups	Create custom groups to limit access to specific application and reporting functionality based upon the user’s role in the organization.	Users such as shift supervisors who are permitted to run reports, but not author/edit report should have a custom group that will restrict their user tasks to only allow consumption of existing reports.
Groups	Set Group Tasks	Only assign administration tasks that are needed to support the groups role in the application portal.	Most user groups should not have access to the Edit Users privilege. The access should be limited to related roles such as Director of IT.
Groups	Set Group Tasks	Only assign reporting tasks that are needed to support the groups role in the reporting module.	Users such as supervisors may only need consumption privilege on reports and users such as department managers may need ability to author reports.
Users	Administration	Always configure additional users as OIM Administrators to allow for group and user creation in case of administrator absence or departure and to avoid interruption in operations.	Upon initial access to R&A, designate multiple roles such as the Director of IT and the Controller as OIM Administrators.
Users	Define Property Level Access	Although it is easier to grant access to all properties to a user, for security reasons, make sure to only assign levels, properties, chains to users who should be accessing the data.	Employees who work for property A should not be able to access guest or records in property B or C. Therefore, they should only be granted access at the property level. On the other hand, a Corporate Revenue Manager will need access to all properties and therefore should be granted access at the enterprise level.
Central Reporting Conversion	Monitoring	Periodically review each of the reporting item types for unaligned reporting items in the Central Reporting Conversion Screen. Failure to align all reporting items may result in discrepancies in report data when Central conversion fields are utilized in reporting.	For example, if a new property is added to the enterprise that already has aligned central market codes, and there are market codes in the new property that do not align with the central codes, they will appear in the Unaligned Reporting Items column in the Central Reporting Conversion screen.
R&A Application
My Account	Preferences	There is an option to start in the Criteria tab or Results tab when editing the report. In Analysis Editor, choose Full Editor and select Start on Criteria tab when editing Analysis. This allows the user to immediately start editing the report in the criteria tab instead of having to wait for the report to run in results tab first before being able to switch to the criteria tab.
Creating/Editing Analytics	Prompts	When creating prompts, choose a default selection to minimize report run time. (Edit Prompt - Options - Default Selection)	For reports such as the Pace report where a certain date range is usually set, create a default selection in the prompt for a set date range.
Creating/Editing Analytics	Filters	When possible, create filters to limit results which will help minimize report run time.	In the Reservations Report, users can create a property filter, a Reservation Status filter and a Room Type filter so the report only displays Property A with reservations that are in Reserved status, and it will exclude pseudo room types.
Creating/Editing Analytics	Subject Area	When creating a report/analysis, do not add Subject Area to the current Subject Area as the action is not supported by R&A. In many cases, it will lead to performance issues or failure to execute reports.	Instead of combining subject areas in an analysis/report which is not supported by R&A, users can create dashboards that includes reports from multiple subject areas. The Dashboard can then be exported and scheduled for delivery.
Creating/Editing Analytics	Sharing Analysis/Visualizer Reports	Save reports in Shared Folder to avoid access issues. No one will have access to edit, delete reports, data models or agents that are saved in the user's My Folder especially if the user no longer works for the company.	If a report creator such as the Director of Revenue has created pace report, reservations report and 90 Day Forecast report and only saved them in My Folder, only the Director of Revenue will have access to run or schedule those reports. If the director no longer works for the property, the hotel staff will have to create all those reports from scratch.
Creating/Editing Analytics	Selecting Attributes	It is recommended that when using the search option to find an attribute, attention is paid to which folder/subfolder the attribute is located in order to pull the data correctly and most efficiently.	The search for "First Name" in the Bookings Reservation SA will result in 2 attributes. If we hover the cursor over the attributes, it will indicate that 1 is the reservation guest's first name and the other is the accompanying guest's first name.
Agent	Report Frequency	If multiple re-runs of a report are necessary, set the re-runs to be at least 15 minutes apart. For larger reports 30 minutes or more apart to minimize performance issues such as extended run time.	Examples of big reports are Pace Reports, Transaction Reports, or reports that have a large date range with multiple daily results such as 90 days reservations forecast with multiple attributes. Examples of smaller reports are Arrival Reports, Housekeeping Reports and Credit Reports.
Agent	Scheduling multiple Reports	Scatter the scheduled jobs to distribute the load uniformly over a period of time. Do not clutter all jobs in a short period of time. User should run critical scheduled jobs during off-hours to avoid performance issues.	If there are 10 big reports that needs to be scheduled. Best Practice would be to start their deliveries after peak hours, for example after 5pm. And scatter the delivery time with 1-hour differences to minimize performance issues. Examples of big reports are Pace Reports, Transaction Reports, or reports that have a large date range with multiple daily results such as 90 days reservations forecast with multiple attributes.
Agent	Scheduling Reports	If the report is renamed, moved or deleted, make sure to pause or cancel the agent/schedule. Otherwise the system will continue to send notification of failure.
BI Publisher	Data Model — Data Sets	Be precise with needed data by selecting only columns needed and use “where” clause and bind parameters whenever possible to restrict returned data more precisely	Instead of using query: SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES; use SELECT DEPARTMENT_ID, DEPARTMENT_NAME FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE DEPARTMENT_ID IN (:P_DEPT_ID) This will reduce the amount of data returned.
BI Publisher	Data Model — Data Sets	Use shorter column names to minimize the XML file size, therefore shortening I/O processing time. This will enhance report efficiency.	Shorten “DEPARTMENT_IDENTIFICATION” to “DEP_ID” or “RESERVATION_TYPE” to “RES_TYPE”
BI Publisher	Data Model — Data Sets	The number of columns/attributes selected in SQL queries should not exceed 100. Large number of columns will impact report performance.
BI Publisher	Data Model — Data Sets	Sorting should be done in the SQL, not during report formatting. Sorting of data is highly recommended to be done at the time of data extraction and we should avoid sorting during report formatting to improve performance.	Example: select resort, confirmation_no, resv_name_id, begin_date, end_date from reservation name where resv_status = 'RESERVED' order by begin_date
BI Publisher	Data Model — Parameters	Binding a large number of parameter values is inefficient and may cause performance issues. Limit the List of Values(LOV) based on SQL queries to 1000 rows.	When creating a list of value populate the number of values based on the required amount of data elements returned.
BI Publisher	Data Model — Parameters	When creating a Menu type parameter, if the list of values may contain multiple values, ensure that if you enable both the "Multiple Selection" and "Can Select All" options, then also select NULL value passed to limit the values that are passed.	When creating parameter ensure to select proper flags to make the report more efficient.
BI Publisher	Report	Make sure that Data Caching is not enabled in Report Properties-Caching. The Enable Data Caching box should be unchecked to ensure up to date data extraction.
BI Publisher	Report Bursting	If bursting is configured for reports, make sure to enable SFTP resend function in the application portal.	When using bursting for BIP reports, enabling the resend functionality will provide redundancy in report delivery in case it fails for unforeseen reasons.
BI Publisher	Report Bursting	When using the bursting function for SFTP, limit number of files for each report to avoid performance issues. It is recommended to ideally limit the number of files to 150.