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Thanks to a collaborative effort between UW-IT’s Business Intelligence (BI) and Web Applications teams, along with valuable input from the School of Nursing, the Student Employees Dashboard is now available in the BI Portal!

Turning Ideas into Insights

The Catalyst for Development

The dashboard project began with a request from a department within the School of Nursing, which relied on manual queries of the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to access student employee data. Although effective, this method required a manual process and technical expertise. The department needed a more efficient, user-friendly solution that could be easily accessed by all staff.

The BI Team saw potential for a solution that could benefit other departments. They set out to design a dashboard that would offer insights into student employee data.

A User-Centric, Yet Scalable Solution

Dashboard development starts with understanding the data—specifically, the data users need and where it comes from. While the initial request focused on data for a single HR organization (the School of Nursing), which could be sourced from the EDW, the team saw value in creating a solution that could scale across the University. However, to achieve this broader application, an additional data source was needed.

The team identified two sources for the necessary data: Workday (HR Hierarchy) and the EDW (student employee detail). The Web Applications team pulled the applicable data from these two sources into Snowflake—a cloud-based data warehousing platform—to create a comprehensive view, which is processed and updated daily. This view serves as the data source for a Tableau extract, which is refreshed daily at 7:00 am.

With the Tableau extract available, the BI Team built a Tableau dashboard, eliminating the need for manual queries, and providing departments across campus with instant, accurate, and up-to-date insights on student employees. Throughout development, the team collaborated closely with the School of Nursing to ensure the dashboard continued to meet their specific needs while also serving a broader audience.

Access

While this dashboard can be used across campus, access is restricted to users with the Administrator/Manager/FiscalTech ASTRA role.

Exploring the Dashboard

Check out the Student Employees dashboard in the BI Portal to explore the tool, including the following features.

Filters

The left panel of the dashboard provides a number of filters, which allow users to narrow results by Employee Status, Position Start Date, and/or various levels of the HR Hierarchy. For more information about these filters, refer to the Filters tab for the dashboard in the BI Portal.

Search

The top of the dashboard provides two search fields, which allow users to search for a specific student by Student Number or UW NetID.

Results

The center of the dashboard displays the results, based on the filter or search specifications. Additionally, each row in the results includes a Magnifying Glass icon, which the user can hover over to display additional detail for a specific student.

Questions/Feedback/Ideas?

Do you have a question about this dashboard and/or a request for a new resource in the BI Portal? Please submit a ticket to help@uw.edu with “BI Portal” in the subject line.

The Reporting & Analytics team (R&A) and Finance DATAGroup have released new versions of the UW Finance Cube and UW Balance Sheet Cube for FY 2024 and FY 2025! Thanks to user feedback, the following updates are now available!

Drill-through functionality for Workday journals (UW Balance Sheet Cube/UW Finance Cube)

You can now connect directly to a Workday journal from the cube with just one click. This feature makes it easy to view detailed journal entries after drilling through to journal line details.

New dimensions (UW Balance Sheet Cube/UW Finance Cube)

• UW Balance Sheet Cube:
  • BudgetDate
  • JournalFirstPostedDate
• UW Finance Cube:
  • BudgetDate
  • JobFamilyDescription
  • JournalFirstPostedDate
  • Position
  • Position Number
  • Salary over the cap
  • Worker Name

Enhanced sorting functionality (UW Finance Cube only)

You can now sort values for the following dimensions alphabetically by name, in addition to the existing code/name format (for example, AC100001 – AC100001 UWIT | ServiceNow Licenses):

• Activity
• Appropriation
• Assignee
• Award
• Award Line
• Balancing Unit
• Cost Center
• Customer
• Function
• Fund
• Gift
• Grant
• Internal Service Provider
• Ledger Account
• Object Class
• Program
• Project
• Resource
• Revenue Category
• Spend Category
• Sponsor
• Supplier

Not seeing what you’re looking for in this release?

There is another release planned for October, so watch your inbox for an announcement! In the meantime, if you have questions or feedback on any of these cubes, please email help@uw.edu with “BI Portal Finance Cube” in the subject line.

We’ve successfully navigated our first fiscal year (FY) with Workday Finance! Since its launch on July 1, 2023, our financial analysis tools have expanded significantly and continue to evolve. Now, a new generation of finance cubes is available in the BI Portal: the UW Balance Sheet Cube for FY 2024 and FY 2025, along with a new version of the UW Finance Cube for FY 2025.

Note: If you are working remotely, you must be logged into Husky OnNet (VPN) in order to access some of the links in this article. For more information, refer to Husky OnNet.

What is the UW Balance Sheet Cube?

The UW Balance Sheet Cube provides insights into balance sheet data, with versions available for FY 2024 and FY 2025. It uses a subset of the measures and dimensions available in the UW Finance Cube, but focuses on different data:

Cube	Type of Data
UW Finance Cube	Expenses Revenues Beginning balances/net positions
UW Balance Sheet Cube	Assets and liabilities Deferred inflows and outflows Ledger account types Net positions

More generally, a data cube is a powerful analysis tool, which allows users to quickly and easily slice and dice data across multiple dimensions, in a single view. For an introduction to cubes, including their benefits over traditional analysis tools such as reports, refer to the What is a Cube introductory video.

How will the UW Balance Sheet Cube help me?

1. Comprehensive Balance Sheet Insights: View balance sheet data across multiple dimensions. Whether it’s analyzing assets and liabilities by balancing unit or deferred inflows and outflows by fund, you can gain a holistic view of the balance sheet.
2. Drill-Down Capabilities: Drill down from summaries to finer levels of information. This feature allows for more granular analysis and better decision-making.
3. User-Friendly Pivot Tables: Connect to the cube and effortlessly create pivot tables by dropping prepopulated measures and dimensions into place.
4. Preferred Analysis Tool: Connect to the cube via your preferred analysis tool (for example, Excel, Power BI, or Tableau) for seamless integration.

Accessing FY 2025 data in the UW Balance Sheet and UW Finance Cubes

Both of these cubes provide access to A LOT of data and we’re only one year into using Workday! To preserve performance as the amount of data grows over time, a new data cube will be created for each fiscal year. This allows for faster data retrieval and more efficient analysis, as it optimizes and isolates the data for each period, reducing system load and processing times.

FY 2025 versions are now available for the UW Balance Sheet and UW Finance Cubes!

How do I access these new cubes?

Refer to UW Finance Cube Resources – Workday Data to download the applicable base workbook and get connected to the cubes! The following base workbooks are now available on this page:

• UW Balance Sheet Cube FY 2024 (new!)
• UW Balance Sheet Cube FY 2025 (new!)
• UW Finance Cube FY 2024 (previously available)
• UW Finance Cube FY 2025 (new!)

Acknowledgements

These cubes are the result of another fantastic collaboration between UW-IT’s Reporting & Analytics (R&A) team and UW Finance’s DATAGroup. DATAGroup provided subject matter expertise to make sure the new cubes are meaningful, engaged with users to understand gaps and requirements, and shared examples and feedback to support the development team. R&A leveraged the DATAGroup’s input, built cubes to meet user, security, and metadata requirements, tested the cubes, and deployed them to the BI Portal catalog.

Key Contributors:

• Danel Phelps, Business Intelligence Engineer, DATAGroup
• Dale Murphy, Project Manager, DATAGroup
• Dinah Mite Millikin, Director, DATAGroup
• Marci Farrell, Business Intelligence Engineer, R&A
• Bomani Siwatu, Test Lead, R&A
• Nina Velikin, Technology Manager, R&A
• Dave Beaulieu, Senior Accounting Analyst, Financial Reporting
• Jefferey Babauta, Director of Finances and Reporting, Office of Research

Questions?

Please contact help@uw.edu with “UW Finance Cube” in the subject line.

The University of Washington is committed to fostering a safe and respectful environment for all students and employees. As part of this mission, the Office of Community Standards & Student Conduct (CSSC) offers an essential online training program on the dangers of hazing. Underscoring its critical importance, this training is mandatory for all incoming students and employees.

To enhance the effectiveness of this program, UW-IT’s Reporting & Analytics team partnered with CSSC to develop two new dashboards, which are now available in the BI Portal! These dashboards track completion records for hazing prevention training, identify areas for additional outreach, and support compliance with this crucial requirement.

For more information about these courses, refer to:

• Hazing Prevention Student Course
• Hazing Prevention Employee Course

Collaborating to Meet Requirements

Creating these dashboards was a team effort! CSSC staff provided the requirements and feedback, while folks in the Reporting & Analytics Web Applications and Business Intelligence (BI) teams pulled the data from various sources and developed and tested the dashboards.

Understanding the Data Pipeline

Typically, BI Portal resources utilize data from the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW); however, these dashboards required an additional data source. Because the training is managed by a third-party vendor (AliveTek), completion records had to come from them, while student and employee data had to come from the EDW. This integration is what made the data meaningful and actionable for users.

To combine these data sources, Indra Narayan, a Data Engineer from the Web Applications team pulled data from AliveTek via an API and loaded it into Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehousing platform. In Snowflake, Indra integrated key student and employee data from the EDW and Workday, creating a comprehensive view for Tableau Dashboards.

With the data ready, Grzegorz (Greg) Grabowski, a Sr. BI Developer from the BI team built the dashboard in Tableau and collaborated with CSSC to ensure it included all necessary elements to meet user needs. Finally, Tracy Fisher, a Software Tester also from the BI team, verified the functionality, accuracy, and stability of the dashboards before they were deployed to production.

About the New Dashboards

Hazing Prevention Employee Course Completion

The Hazing Prevention Employee Course Completion dashboard offers a comprehensive summary of employee participation in the course, highlighting the total number of employees. You can drill down into specific data using filters like completion status, completed date, HR Org status, and employee status. There’s even a search function for specific NetIDs. You can also hover over the checkmark (✔) or crossmark (X) icons in the results to display a tooltip with additional context, such as manager information and HR organization.

Hazing Prevention Student Course Completion

The Hazing Prevention Student Course Completion dashboard offers a comprehensive summary of student participation in the course, highlighting the total number of students and those involved in UW athletic programs. You can drill down into specific data using filters like completion status, enrollment information, college, department, sport, and more. There’s even a search function for specific NetIDs or student numbers. You can also hover over the checkmark (✔) or crossmark (X) icons in the results to display a tooltip with additional context, such as manager information and student academic organizations.

The dashboard also identifies which students are also employees, providing key information to support follow-ups and identify trends.

Access Information

As each dashboard reports on different populations, the users who have access to the completion data are also different between dashboards.

Dashboard	Who Has Access
Hazing Prevention Employee Course Completion	Unit heads and their designees
Hazing Prevention Student Course Completion	Unit heads and their designees Staff in the Office of Community Standards & Student Conduct Office of Admissions Orientation Programs Office of the University Registrar

Requesting Access to the Dashboards

Access to these dashboards is secured by a UW group, which is managed by the Office of Community Standards & Student Conduct.

To request access, email nohazing@uw.edu with one of the following subject lines (whichever is applicable):

• “Access Request: Hazing Prevention Employee Course Completion”
• “Access Request: Hazing Prevention Student Course Completion”

Questions?

Please submit questions as follows to ensure they reach the appropriate team and get a quicker response.

If you have questions that relate to…	Then…
The data presented in the dashboard…	Email nohazing@uw.edu with “Hazing Prevention Course Completion Data” in the subject line.
The visualization, filters, or the entry for the dashboard in the BI Portal (for example, information on the resource details, metadata, links, etc.)…	Email help@uw.edu with “Hazing Prevention Dashboard” in the subject line.

 

The Husky Card is the official ID for the UW community, granting access to services like campus libraries, buildings, transportation, and entertainment. Husky Card Services (HCS), part of UW Housing & Food Services, is responsible for managing and issuing these cards.

To provide comprehensive insights into Husky Card production and distribution data, UW-IT’s Reporting & Analytics and Administrative Services teams partnered with HCS to develop a custom dashboard. This dashboard is hosted on UW-IT’s Tableau server with access managed via a UW Group. Although not widely available, this dashboard shows a powerful data solution that emerged from a collaborative effort.

Collaborating to Meet Requirements

The initiative began with Jacob Lipman, a Senior Applications System Engineer from UW-IT’s Administrative Systems, Custom Solutions team, who recognized the need for a dashboard while working with HCS on another project. The HCS team was manually extracting, cleaning, and formatting data on a monthly basis for leadership reporting—a dashboard could definitely streamline this process!

From there Grzegorz (Greg) Grabowski, a Senior Business Intelligence Developer from the UW-IT’s Reporting & Analytics team joined the effort, collaborating with Administrative Systems to refine a query that extracts data from the IDCard and Student databases. Together they worked on the dashboard prototypes—reviewing and revising them based on user feedback.

About the Dashboard

The Husky Card Dashboard answers key business questions by providing the following:

• Number of Husky Cards printed, by type (Student, Employee, Retired) and ID office, during a given timeframe.
• Peak production times for each ID office, showing volume trends over time (day, week, month, year).
• List of individuals issued a Husky Card during a given timeframe, with filterable details.
• Number of first-time Husky Cards issued by type during a given timeframe.
• Number of replacement Husky Cards issued, filterable by replacement reason (lost, stolen, damaged, etc.) during a given timeframe.
• Number and names of fee-based program students issued their first-time student Husky Card during a given timeframe.

The dashboard presents Husky Card data in a number of different views, which were developed based on feedback from the user.

Access Information

This dashboard is only available to Husky Card Services.

Questions?

If you have questions about this dashboard or would like to inquire about a similar solution for your department, please contact help@uw.edu with “BI Portal Dashboards” in the subject line.

We are thrilled to expand our suite of Grant Reporting resources with the new Grant Manager Dashboard!

Note: To learn more about additional Grant Reporting resources, refer to Empowering PIs and Grant Managers: New Resources for Grant Reporting.

About the Grant Manager Dashboard

The Grant Manager Dashboard displays grant data, which is tailored to the Grant Manager logged into Workday. This gives Grant Managers a central place to find grant-related content that is specific to them.

Similar to the Principal Investigator Dashboard, this dashboard splits data across six tabs—Sponsored Grants, Awards, Stand Alone Grants, Gifts, Grant Staffing, and Additional Resources.

For more information, including instructions on how to use the tool, refer to the Grant Manager Dashboard wiki page.

Note: If working remote, you must be logged into Husky OnNet (VPN) to access our Wiki site. For more information, refer to Husky OnNet.

Questions?

Please contact datagrp@uw.edu to initiate a ticket with the Finance DATAGroup.