Business Data Reporting and Integration Tools
Overview
The Enterprise Business Intelligence Solutions (EBIS) team creates standard reports from a cross section of administrative systems such as ARC, PAC, SIS and many others. The EBIS team facilitates and provides administrators at Columbia's schools and departments with the tools needed for self-service access to select sets of data, standard reports, dashboards, and analytics. Reports are secured, leveraging the security models of their source system. In addition, EBIS provides data integration and management services to build robust data transfer processes. The team uses a variety of best of breed reporting and data integration tools to surface insights to your data, as described below.
BI Launch Pad
The BI Launch Pad is a web application that serves as the gateway for accessing BusinessObjects reports such as Crystal and Web Intelligence, as well as other content. Only approved business users have access to the BI Launch Pad. It provides a centralized location to interact with reports, documents, and other BI-related assets. FDS and HRDS reports are accessed via the BI Launch Pad, as well as reports from other functional areas.
Content is organized into folders and provides the end user the ability to further mark reports as 'favorites', tag reports into 'categories', and easily see their most recently used reports. The BI Launch Pad also supports features for sharing reports and documents with other users.
The BI Launch Pad is accessible by logging on to my.columbia.edu, clicking on the Enterprise Reports tab, and then clicking BI Launch Pad icon.
Crystal Reports
Crystal Reports is used to create highly formatted, print-oriented, and complex reports. Creating reports with Crystal allows for precise control over layout, formatting, and design elements. Reports created using Crystal can also be interactive with drill down capabilities and parameterized to allow for narrowing of results. To aid with the visualization of data, charts and graphs can be placed in reports and branding can easily added. Reports can be printed to PDF and excel friendly versions of some reports are also available.
Web Intelligence
Web Intelligence (Webi) is a web based reporting tool that provides users with an intuitive way to slice and dice their data. Webi allows users to filter, sort, remove columns, rearrange columns, and other functions to tailor the reporting output. Tailored Webi reports can be saved to the user's 'Personal Folder' for future use. Users with developer access can also create their own reports from various “data universes” to build custom reports to support their needs. Additional training and approvals are required to obtain Webi developer rights. Webi reports can have simple tabular layouts, or complex dashboard like reports with charts and graphs. Reports can be exported to PDF or excel.
Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is data visualization software that makes it easy to create user friendly dashboards and reports with charts, graphs, maps and interactivity. Power BI reports can be accessed via a web browser and no software is required to run reports. Power BI enables a developer to import data, perform visual analysis using intuitive dashboards, and securely share insights and data stories with your team, other departments, or the world via your website.
To utilize, you must first have access to the data stores within the University Data Store (UDS) (or your departmental databases) that you would like to analyze. EBIS offers Power BI developer license for a fee. In addition, EBIS offers robust development services for clients needing assistance building their Power BI solutions. Our current development rate is $125/hour. Please reach out to us to discuss and learn more about our full suite of development services by emailing us at [email protected].
Please note:
- CUIT only supports Power BI for employees of the University (non-CUIMC)
- CUIT does not provide Power BI licenses or support for students
- CUIT does not support Power BI licenses for CUIMC employees. CUIMC employees seeking access to Power BI should submit a ticket in CUIMC's ServiceNow platform.
Data Management and Integration
In addition to providing reporting services, the EBIS team is able to assist schools and departments with their data integration needs using best in class ETL (extract, transform, load) tools. The primary ETL tool employed by the EBIS team is SAP Business Objects Data Services (BODS). EBIS provides services to extract data from our data warehouse and distribute it schools and departments as data feeds. Conversely, EBIS can also develop solutions to extract data out of your applications and into a dedicated database for reporting purposes. The robust development services are available at our current development rate of $125/hour. Please reach out to us to discuss and learn more about our full suite of development services by emailing us at [email protected].
Data Cookbook
The EBIS Data Cookbook provides a repository for data definitions and data governance to ensure the accuracy of reports, and to increase the agility with which we can develop new reports. Through the use of the Data Dictionary, anyone creating reports from the UDS can utilize a common set of data definitions and governance tools. If you have questions about our Data Cookbook, or would like access, please email [email protected].