In today’s fast-paced business environment, managing and customizing dashboards, workflows, and parameters efficiently is crucial for decision-makers and financial teams. OneStream, a leading financial management platform, offers a range of powerful features that enable users to tailor their experiences and streamline processes. Among these are Custom Controls, Workflow Closure, and solutions to Empty Parameters in Dashboards.
1. Unlock the Power of Custom Controls in OneStream Dashboards
Custom Controls provide an excellent way to make your dashboards more dynamic and user-friendly. With Custom Controls, you can reuse dashboard templates and customize their behavior to meet specific needs—without having to start from scratch each time. These controls are highly versatile and let you embed dashboards within other dashboards and interact with them through Event Listeners.
Example 1: Button Opens a Dialog:
- A button is placed in the Custom Control Dashboard.
- When the button is clicked, an Event Listener triggers the action of opening a dialog box (e.g., a pop-up).
- The label inside the dialog is updated with the value from the button click.
Example 2: Button Returns a Message:
- A button click in the Custom Control Dashboard can also trigger a Dashboard Extender Business Rule to show a custom message.
- This message appears in a pop-up, providing relevant information to the user.
Custom Controls empower you to create more flexible and dynamic dashboards tailored to the needs of different business use cases.
2. Understanding Workflow Closure and Its Impact
A common misconception in OneStream is that closing a workflow completely prevents consolidations and calculations in the closed periods. While it’s true that closing a workflow has implications on consolidations, it does not fully block them. Let's clarify the details and explore how workflow closure affects the system's behavior.
What Happens When You Close a Workflow?
- Regular Consolidation/Calculation: When consolidations or calculations are forced on a closed period, the behavior depends on the data status:
- If all data units are OK, the consolidation will only apply to the open periods (e.g., if January and February are closed, consolidating in April will only affect March and April).
- If some months are closed and others open, the system will consolidate all open months and ignore the closed ones.
- If a data unit has the status CN or CA, the consolidation will apply to the impacted periods.
- If the status is "OK, MC", even closed workflows will proceed as usual.
- Custom Calculations: Even closed workflows do not prevent custom calculations triggered by dashboard buttons or DM sequences, making it easy to run necessary calculations despite workflow closure.
Best Practices to Manage Workflow Closures:
- Lock and Certify Workflows: Locking and certifying workflows after each month’s completion ensures that no unwanted changes are made, preventing data tampering through imports or forms.
- Time-Dependent Business Rules: Limit changes to specific periods or scenarios so that closed periods are not inadvertently affected.
- Limit Force Processes: Use force processes sparingly, only when necessary, as they can be resource intensive.
Closing vs. Locking:
- Locking a workflow ensures data integrity and prevents users from making changes.
- Closing a workflow is specifically designed to preserve historical data structures and hierarchy, not for locking data.
3. Resolving Empty Parameters in Dashboards
Imagine launching a dashboard only to discover that combo boxes, list boxes, or other parameters appear empty, despite being properly configured. This can lead to confusion and frustration for users. The root cause of this issue is often that the default value assigned to a parameter fails to populate automatically when the dashboard is loaded. Here's how you can resolve this.
How to Fix Empty Parameters:
Understand the Problem
The issue occurs because setting a default value doesn’t automatically display it when the dashboard is opened, leaving combo boxes or list boxes empty.
Use a Dashboard Extender Business Rule
The solution is to use a Dashboard Extender Business Rule to assign values to the parameters when the dashboard loads. This ensures the parameters are populated correctly, removing any ambiguity for the user.
Steps to Implement:
1. Create a Business Rule: Inside the Dashboard Maintenance Unit (DMU), right-click and select Add File to create a Dashboard Extender Business Rule.
2. Script the Rule: In the business rule, specify the parameter (e.g., ChildrenOf_Legal) and assign the value you want it to have at runtime (e.g., EUS01).
3. Assign the Business Rule to the Dashboard: Ensure that the Load Dashboard Server Task is set to execute the business rule upon loading the dashboard. The rule should be linked as follows:
{Workspace.Current.MyAssembly.MyBusinessRule}
{OnLoadMainDashboard}{}
4. Result: Once the dashboard is loaded, the parameters will populate automatically, and combo boxes or list boxes will display the correct values as specified in the business rule.
If you're using embedded dashboards, ensure that the business rule is directly assigned to the main dashboard for it to function correctly.
Conclusion
OneStream features ability to create Custom Controls, manage Workflow Closures, and solve issues like Empty Parameters can significantly enhance your financial management and reporting processes.
By leveraging these features correctly, businesses can create dynamic dashboards, preserve historical data integrity, and ensure seamless user experiences. Mastering these functionalities will allow your organization to optimize workflows and drive more informed decision-making. To know more, check out our blogs on OneStream!
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