Context

I was on a project where users needed a highly customized interface to input data. Moreover, as it happens often with Asian companies, their fiscal calendar was from April to March. The same data entry had to be made on both a Fiscal Year basis and on a Calendar Year basis. Our application had 2 cubes, one for Calendar Year and one for Fiscal Year and both cubes need to always be in sync. I am not going into the details of why we decided to design our application with 2 cubes, it can be the subject of another blog post, but it was the best decision and the replication of the design in place with the legacy system (Oracle Essbase).

We also wanted to make the use of the application simple for users, we did not want them to have to guess if they had to run a sync or not and we did not even want them to be aware that there was one or multiple cubes, we wanted users to be using one application, the number of cubes don’t really matter here.

And of course, we had a relatively short timeline.

We decided to extend the XF Platform with a MarketPlace solution. What is an OneStream Marketplace solution you might ask? In a few words, the Marketplace is the equivalent of the App store for your smartphone, it is an easy way to extend the functionalities of your existing platform with solutions for Task Manager, People Planning, Thing Planning, etc… You can find more here . To me, having the OneStream Platform that can be extended indefinitely is a key element why companies should use OneStream and make the most out of their investment. Once you have the base in place, extending your Platform is a simple thing.

For our specific needs, we chose to use the Data Entry 123 solution in the XF Marketplace:

• Forms are organized in folders and users can pick and choose from there.
• Need to run calculations on Open and on Save without users knowing it (calculations must be lightning fast as well)

In this blog post, I will show you how to install Data Entry 123 (you will be surprised how easy it is), how to use Selectors and why you’ll love it, how to attach calculations to a form (and how you can do things you’ve never thought it could be possible), and how to integrate Data Entry 123 Forms in the Workflow.

I will use the AVBS application for this, yes the application Cameron created for the ACE Company.

Installing Data Entry 123

XF Marketplace

Go to the XF Marketplace then Store 

find the ‘Data Entry 123’ solution: 

And download it:

Loading the Data Entry 123 solution in your Application

Open your OneStream Application and go to Application -> Load / Extract

Select the zip you just downloaded and load it into your application.

Let the load finish (it just takes a few seconds).

Setting up Data Entry 123

The XML components are added to the Application, now we need to setup the solution, go to OnePlace -> Dashboards, open the new Dashboard Group: Data Entry 123 (DFM):

Click on ‘Create Tables’:

And now, let’s launch the Solution:
The last thing we need to do to setup the solution is to look at the settings, find the settings icon to the upper right corner:

 

here, you can select the Security Role and most importantly, the Cube View Group you want to use with Data Entry 123. If you don’t have a Cube View Group yet or need to change it later, it’s not a problem, you can create the Cube View Group and come back to this screen and update the Cube View Group.

Last and not the least, don’t forget to Save Settings!!

You’ve added the solution to your application! Now let’s configure it, that is what we will discover in the next chapter of this blog series: DataEntry 123 Part 2: Build more with less with Selectors.