Compensation

OTBI Best
Practices
Tips on how to use the Compensation Subject Areas

WHITE PAPER / AUGUST 4, 2020

PURPOSE STATEMENT

This document provides tips and best practices on how to use the OTBI Compensation Subject
Areas. It is intended to help you leverage the business benefits of OTBI release 19A and onwards.

DISCLAIMER
This document in any form, software or printed matter, contains proprietary information that is the
exclusive property of Oracle. Your access to and use of this confidential material is subject to the
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not be disclosed, copied, reproduced or distributed to anyone outside Oracle without prior written
consent of Oracle. This document is not part of your license agreement nor can it be incorporated
into any contractual agreement with Oracle or its subsidiaries or affiliates.

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[PAGE TITLE] TABLE OF CONTENTS

[TOC SECTION HEAD] OPTIONAL

Purpose Statement ...................................................................................... 2

Introduction .................................................................................................. 4

Where Do I Start? ........................................................................................ 4

Compensation Subject Area Tips ................................................................ 6

Compensation Hierarchies .......................................................................... 8

Tips on Using Facts With Dimensions ......................................................... 9

Customer Connect Report Samples .......................................................... 10

Links .......................................................................................................... 11

Conclusion ................................................................................................. 12

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INTRODUCTION
“The role of compensation:

You can get the most out of your compensation application by using - Attract capable employees to
the organization
reporting and analysis tools to present or review data in different ways. This - Motivate them toward superior
paper assumes you already have a working knowledge of Oracle performance

Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI). For more information on OTBI, - Retain their services over an
extended period of time
see the Links section from the table of contents. Let's begin with a brief - Establish a positive corporate
reputation
overview of OTBI reporting tools. If you already know OTBI, you can skip
- Increase or maintain
this section. morale/satisfaction

- Achieve internal and external

• OTBI Target User: Reporting Power Users equity

- Reduce turnover and

• OTBI: A collection of tools to report, visualize, and interact with data encourage company loyalty”
Dr. G C Mohanta, BE, MSc
• Answers (Engg), MBA, PhD (Mgt)
Professor,
• Dashboards Al-Qurmoshi Institute of Business
Management Hyderabad
• Action Links
"Compensation Planning and
• Conditional Formatting Analysis Tools

• Bursting Compensation strategies that

entice employees to stay at the
company are more important
• Visual Graphs than ever.

• Briefing Books According to a report by the

Society for Human Resource
Management (SHRM), more
• KPIs than two-thirds of organizations
surveyed said they have a
Security Role Used in Compensation Subject Areas difficult time recruiting for job
openings.
Delivered roles which grant access to the compensation subject areas are:
- Compensation Analyst Agility in compensation
- Compensation Manager management is crucial – the
approach needs to be flexible
- Line Manager and can’t rely on rigid
The duty role granted is: standards. Best practices
include using in-depth data to
Compensation Transaction Analysis Duty - FBI_COMPENSATION_TRANSACTION_ANALYSIS_DUTY figure out compensation for
each employee or employee
If new functionality is delivered to secure workforce compensation data in OTBI, the delivered roles group. As with most data-driven
inherit the changes automatically. To ensure that your custom job roles have access to compensation approaches, this helps you
make better decisions.”
OTBI, you must regenerate all data roles for custom job roles that inherit the above security. If you are
using the delivered roles, no action is required. SelectHub Blog
Confidence in Software,
Compensation Planning and
WHERE DO I START? Analysis Tools

Start by reviewing the subject area description documentation. There is a description document for
every subject area posted in Customer Connect.
https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/business-intelligence/index.html

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Legacy releases are located here.
https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/453d9c54ab

OTBI – Subject Area Description

• Lists all the HCM OTBI subject areas

o Key information includes:
 brief description of the subject area
 business questions answered by the subject area
 primary navigation path to application pages
 any special considerations in using this subject area

This is an example of the subject area documentation:

OTBI – Compensation Subject Areas

• Salary
• Salary History
• Stock
• Workforce Compensation Budgets
• Workforce Compensation

OTBI – Out of the box (OOTB) content

• Does Oracle ship any OOTB contents that I can leverage?

o Sample OOTB analyses exist under \\Shared folders

o Customers can save and modify them in custom folders
o The shared folders are locked from any changes starting from release 13
o OTBI analyses are available in 'Transaction Analysis Samples' under the respective
modules like Compensation
o Two Compensation Dashboards are located in the Dashboards menu item

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OTBI – Subject area to database lineage

• What else can I learn about the content in OTBI?

o Provides the mapping from the subject area attributes to the database columns
o Helpful to identify attributes reported from the subject areas and the corresponding
database columns.
o Data lineage is generated for every release, and available through customer connect:
https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/bb74f29246

COMPENSATION SUBJECT AREA TIPS

• SALARY: use this subject area for a single row of data from the active employee population
o TIP: in 19B we added As-of Date prompt capability*

• SALARY HISTORY: use this subject area for all rows for all workers

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 o BUT: if using a hierarchy, the terminated workers are removed from the hierarchy**

*What is an As-of Date prompt? It allows dynamic resetting from the as-of date default, which is today
(otherwise known as "sysdate"), to a date prompt that a user can enter. This is now the standard in all
Human Resources subject areas. Previously, Salary was an exception. There are a number of
examples of how to do this in the Report Sharing Center. Here is one:
https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/33f0de266b

**You can find a solution to line managers reporting on terminated workers in this posting:
https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/2b1dabce86

• WORKFORCE COMPENSATION: use this for non-budget related data, or for worker-level
budgets; this subject area includes all direct and indirect reports and individual contributors

o TIP: if you’re a compensation professional, use data and metrics from the
Compensation Manager folders; if you’re a line manager or other worksheet
manager, then use the Worksheet Manager folders

o TIP: as a best practice when reporting on plans, filter for the specific plan and
cycle, and also consider adding the component name for clarity – if you don’t add the
component name, data rolls up – for mixed components such as monetary amounts
and shares, the rolled up data won’t make sense – in addition filter will allow you to
contextually rename any of worksheet columns to the plan specific user-defined
name

o TIP: use the spyglass on filters instead of the drop down arrow

Rolled up data does not make sense: Add component name:

• WORKFORCE COMPENSATION BUDGET: use this for budget related data; this subject area
includes managers but not individual contributors

o TIP: we now include the top manager folder in the budget subject area so the budget
numbers can true up to the application Administration Report called Budget
Consumption

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 OTBI Report

Application Budget Consumption Report

COMPENSATION HIERARCHIES

• What are all the hierarchies for?

Workforce Compensation Manager Hierarchies

• Compensation Manager Hierarchy (secured by data security): use this for the compensation
professionals

• Compensation Worksheet Manager Hierarchy (secured by the logged-in user): use this for line
managers

List Dimensions - potentially use for dashboard prompts, these are NOT a hierarchy

• Assignment Manager List (secured by the logged-in user): use this for line managers in Salary
& Stock

• Assignment Manager Unsecured List (unsecured): use this for the compensation professionals
in Salary & Stock

• Compensation Manager List (secured by data security): use this for the compensation
professionals in WFC

• Compensation Worksheet Manager List (secured by the logged-in user): use this for line
managers in WFC

Further Information on Hierarchies

• Compensation Manager Hierarchy

o This manager hierarchy is secured by a data privilege that grants access to specified
objects and data for the logged in user
o This security corresponds to the data access that the logged in user has access in
the application
o ‘Manager Name’ always returns the users that the data security provides access to
o Not restricted to users with direct reports

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 o Returns data for users with no direct reports, i.e. compensation professionals

• Compensation Worksheet Manager Hierarchy

o Manager hierarchy is secured by the logged-in user
o ‘Manager Name’ always returns the logged-in user
o Use if you want the worksheet manager hierarchy and you want to deliver the report
to worksheet managers, so they can only see their hierarchy
o The hierarchy corresponds to the hierarchy displayed in the compensation worksheet

• Compensation Manager List

o The list dimension is for report prompt and dashboard prompt purposes. Don’t use as
a hierarchy for drill down reporting
o This dimension has a list of workers with the levels indicating the hierarchy
o You can use Compensation Manager List along with: Compensation Manager
Hierarchy
o You can’t use Compensation Manager List along with:
 Assignment Manager
 Assignment Manager Unsecured
 Matrix Manager
 Worksheet Manager
 Worksheet Manager List

• Compensation Worksheet Manager List

o Designed to improve the performance of report & dashboard prompts
o For report dashboard prompt purposes and not to be used as a hierarchy for drill
down reporting
o You can use Worksheet Manager List along with: Worksheet Manager Hierarchy
o You can’t use Worksheet Manager List along with:
 Assignment Manager
 Assignment Manager Unsecured
 Compensation Manager
 Compensation Manager List
 Matrix Manager

Note: In the workforce compensation task area, there is a batch process used to synchronize the plan
hierarchy to OTBI. This is called Synchronize Hierarchy - Synchronize hierarchy to Oracle
Transactional Business Intelligence, and it can be found in the Run Batch Processes task.

TIPS ON USING FACTS WITH DIMENSIONS

Some of the dimension columns require special treatment to use along with fact columns. When
reporting on Alerts and Performance Metrics in WFC subject areas, or Salary Rate and Range
Differentials in Salary subject areas, you need to select at least one metric.

If you work with any of these columns and receive the error, "No fact table exists at the requested level
of detail..." the resolution is to ensure that a column from a Fact, for example, "Compensation
Components and Rewards", and one of the Alert metrics (such as "Number of Alerts") are included as
columns in the report. You may hide metrics columns if they aren't desired output.

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(In addition, any time you create a cross subject area report that has metrics, follow the above
guidelines. In the Links section of this document there’re detailed instructions on how to create cross
subject area joins.)

This table lists some scenarios for when to use metrics.

Folder Name Compulsory Metric

Alerts Number Of Compensation Alerts

Range Differentials Count of Range Differential Values

Salary Basis Pay Rates* Count of Salary Basis Pay Rates

Salary Basis Components Count of Salary Basis Components

Salary Pay Rates* Rate Amount

Salary Basis - Complete Any of these:

Count of Range Differential Values
Count of Salary Basis Pay Rates
Count of Salary Basis Components

* Rates related changes in subject areas are available from release 19D onwards.

Here’s a couple more tips about Filters, and on getting the data you might need from these
Performance Management columns.

Performance Columns Filters to Use

Performance Management Calculated Average Calculated Manager Section Rating

Competency Rating (where Section Type = REG)

Performance Management Calculated Goal Average Calculated Manager Section Rating

Rating (where Section Type = GOAL)

CUSTOMER CONNECT REPORT SAMPLES

These are just a few of the sample reports available on Customer Connect.

Report Location

IC / Variable Compensation* https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/55a9495407

Compensation Approvals - Dashboard https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/1a3d875c89

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 Your Grants https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/73b8a0dba4

Workforce Compensation Budget Comparison https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/0d9e59c87b

Report

WFC Prompt Act as Proxy Report https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/a7ec6b458a

WFC Comp Hierarchy Sum Count Amount https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/d2586c10b0

Report

Compensation Salary History Master Detail https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/1d58d320b7

Report

Salary History Components Report https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/e2a7a4e7e2

How to add a BI report to My Information https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/77a95c65b2

* Note that Individual Compensation data is available in the Payroll Element Entry subject areas.

LINKS

Oracle University has application training, and reporting tools training.

Compensation application training:

Start in education.oracle.com/cloud
HR Oracle Global Human Resources Cloud Learning Subscription
Learn by role > Cloud Functional > Compensation.

OTBI training:
Starting out like above, but enter "OTBI" in the search box. See these trainings:
-Getting Started with HCM Cloud Reporting with OTBI
-Examining Subject Areas *
-Analytics
-Creating, Modifying, Enhancing, and Sharing Analyses and Dashboards

* Examining Subject Areas includes:

Reviewing Salary Details Real Time
Reviewing Workforce Compensation Real Time

Customer Connect:

HCM - Business Intelligence: Using OTBI Hierarchies

https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/be67f18060

Also there are sample reports and dashboards available in the Report Sharing Center on Cloud
Customer Connect.

Delivered reports:
MOS KB 2023155.1 has many useful links to delivered reports and resources. See link and section for
"Review Prebuilt Analytics and Reports" within HCM reports and here:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/global-human-resources/r13-update17d/analyze-and-report.html

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Cross Joining Subject Areas:
There is a link to a document describing the process for creating a cross subject area query on this
useful post: https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/posts/c04a4fe44d

CONCLUSION

Armed with reporting tools, tips, and best practices, you will now be able to see your compensation
application data in new ways, and be empowered to make informed decisions.

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White Paper Compensation OTBI Best Practices
August 2020August 2020
Author: Gail Langendorf