OneStream’s version 8 has so many exciting implications for the future of the OneStream platform.
OneStream has dubbed it the “Gateway to the Next Generation”. With the move from .NET4 to .NET6 OneStream boasts greater scaling while gaining faster performance, all without client downtime. OneStream Identity Server allows for a more secure underlying architecture meeting higher client demands. At BDA we are all excited about the latest changes and the investment OneStream is making in the future.
While many of these enhancements are behind the scenes, meaning the end user may not notice much in their day-to-day, there are some exciting end-user enhancements as well!
If you have not seen them yet here are some of the latest changes you can expect from V8.
Journals
OneStream has made several changes to the journal posting process. I think users will be excited about the new capabilities.
Copy Entries
You can now copy journals across periods and in 8.1 you can copy across scenarios as well. Before this, you needed a custom business rule to write an export of your entries which could then be imported into the next month. Now it is seamlessly integrated into your Adj Workflow!
Check the journal you want to copy then click the Copy button.
At a minimum select your Target Time Periods, you can also change the name, add a description, and choose to include attachments, then click ok. You will get a notice that your entries are copied successfully. Now if you navigate to the target periods you will see the entries are now there.
Prevent Self-posting and Require a Journal Template
Organizations can prevent self-posting and self-approval of entries without the need for a journal event handler business rule. Now this is simply controlled within the Workflow settings.
The Workflow also has a setting to ‘Require Journal Template’. Setting this to true will gray out the create journals icon on the Workflow and only allow users to create journals from a template.
Note that while the self-post and self-approve setting apply to the Administrator as well the setting to Require Journal Template does not.
Descriptions
Now you can see account descriptions in journal lines as well as having the ability to turn on User Defined Dimension descriptions.
Validate Entries
Before posting entries, users can now run a validate for intersection problems before posting. This allows errors to be caught earlier on in the journal process.
Users just need to click the Validate button and will get a message similar to validation messages from the transformation process which will note the error (ex. Member has children, invalid flow dimension based on constraints) or will note that the “Journal Validated Successfully”.
After adding my missing Cost Center, I now get a successful validation notice.
Load to Unrelated Entities
Another new setting on Workflows related to journals allows users to load unrelated entities. Like the import step, you can now control this on your Adj Workflow steps by simply setting the integration settings to true or false.
Shortcuts & Hotkeys
When inputting data into data grides there are some new hotkeys and shortcuts in version 8. Who doesn’t love a shortcut key?
In addition to using the save icon you can now also hit Ctrl + S to quickly save data in grids.
You can also quickly type numbers with a k, m, or b at the end to represent thousands, millions, and billions.
The following shortcuts are also referenced in the Design and Reference guide. You can now type over an old amount with one of these shortcuts to add, subtract, and do other math within the data grid. This is a great step to getting Excel functionality users love into their planning and data input process!
Copy/Paste and Rename
While copying, pasting, and renaming doesn’t sound that exciting, anyone who has had a typo in a Form or had a client want to change Template names after initial creation has felt this pain. To rename a Form (or a data management step or sequence) you would need to delete the original and create a new one with the correct name, then put all the settings and customization back. Now you can simply rename a Form or Data Management Step or Sequence using the rename button that is available in other areas of OneStream.
Sometimes it is the small things in life!
You can also now copy a Form or Data Management step or sequence allowing you to quickly spin up new items while holding the previous settings.
One more change is that you can rename alternate cases, prior to 8.0 you could not change a case (ex. ‘Balance sheet’ to ‘Balance Sheet’) you had to remove a character and add back now you can just rename it once. These have always been small pain points for me.
Cube View Logging
We have all likely created a Cube View that was a monster (whether intentionally or not). With 8.1 you can now log long-running Cube Views to help determine what is causing the slowdown in order to improve run time.
You will first need to turn logging on for the Cube View. Do this under General Settings > Common > General
After you run your Cube View you can go to the task activity and use the Child Steps button to view the different steps that took place during this process and how long each step took along with Processing Information.
Make sure when you are done troubleshooting your Cube View you set the logging back to ‘False’, so you are not using extra processing to log when not needed.
IdeaStream
Something I was excited about in the 8.1 release was seeing that OneStream is taking IdeaStream seriously! They noted three items that came directly from IdeaStream as being a part of this release. Users are asking and OneStream is listening!
One functionality that I have been asked about many times is drilling down from an XFGetCell. Users now have this drill capability in Excel.
Another new capability is spinning off a Quick View from a selected cell in a Cube View. I have been asked if you can spin off a Quick View from an entire Cube View which I have always had to tell clients no. Could this feature be coming next?! Imagine converting a Cube View to a Quick View in one click. Sorry OneStream, we can’t help that we always want a little more!
The third IdeaStream update is the ability to send automated notifications when data management sequences have finished running without needing a custom business rule. This is a bit of a theme with the new release, things that were previously only achievable through a business rule are now configurable.
These notifications can be configured to send on success, failure, or both, as well as controlling which users and groups will receive notifications.
Workspaces
While I have not yet had the opportunity to spend time using Workspaces in v8 I felt I could not discuss v8 updates without at least mentioning them. This was a big addition introduced in 7.3. Workspaces are now the foundation of dashboard development and allow for more flexible development, reusing names within the same application, and migration between apps.
In 7.4 we saw Assemblies added to Dashboard Maintenance Units, in v8 Cube Views and in 8.1 Data Management also joins the Workspace. Now we can access all these objects within one development screen without jumping around the Application.
It is also worth noting that under Presentation what was previously ‘Dashboards’ has now been renamed ‘Workspaces’.
Enter Key
Worthy of its own section? I think so. As of v8.1 the enter key now works in all search boxes within the platform!
