Superpower your OpenAir Reporting Engine with the Business Intelligence Connector and Scripting

A good PSA solution should provide data-driven reporting and advanced analytics that offers a complete overview of your PS business. NetSuite OpenAir was designed with this in mind. It incorporates a robust dashboard with innovative reporting and analytic tools to help you have a 360 degree view of your project and its components. It offers on-demand insights in real-time to support critical decision-making.

For a long time, many OpenAir users have utilized its Business Intelligence Connector to connect 3rd party analytic tools or other external systems, such as Microsoft Excel, for further analyzing data published via an OpenAir report within those platforms. A somewhat new feature of the BI Connector now allows you to access the data via an OpenAir script.

OpenAir Business Intelligence Connector

The OpenAir Business Intelligence Connector offers point-and-click access to OpenAir from existing reporting business intelligence (BI), workflow, and integration applications. It lets you publish reports in OData/JSON formats that Microsoft Power BI, Excel, Tableau, and the like can consume. The connector enables you to access OpenAir data in real-time without writing code.

The Business Intelligence Connector is a great tool if what you want to do is use OpenAir data as it is in an external system such as Excel, Tableau, and the like. However, some users have a need to utilize and store summarized or calculated data that is a result of a published OpenAir report for future or next level of reporting, alerting, or any subsequent step of a process you want to automate. The sky’s the limit. All of this can be done within OpenAir through scripting. For example, a user may be interested in using a summarized or calculated value on a project for future use, something that OpenAir doesn’t store by default.

Utilizing OpenAir Scripting

Recognizing the challenge above, Top Step designed a solution leveraging OpenAir Scripting. Using the example above, the script can read the summarized data from a report using the BI Connector and then store that summarized or calculated data in a custom field or fields. In other words, you can then access that new value stored back on the project any time you wish without calculating or summarizing again. Since it’s now a stored value on the project or other object in OpenAir, you can use that value for another purpose – such as alerting or a comparison.

Bridging the Gap

The benefits of implementing this script are more pronounced on the reporting backend of OpenAir. One advantage is that it allows you to change reports as needed—the script functions based on the values of the report. Let’s say you decide upfront that you only wish to evaluate projects in progress; the script will recognize the values as you configured in your report and only report on those in progress. If you want to assess completed projects months later, the script will adjust accordingly.

The script gives you control over the filters, how metrics are calculated, and every other aspect of and power the OpenAir reporting engine has.

The best part about the script is that it’s fully automated. You only need to set it up, and it will complete your task. Your role is only to build a report and put it on a schedule. The script will run and look at the last published data based on the schedule.

Another advantage is when you have complex detailed data that require summarization to get to the data you need to report on – the scripting engine alone may not have the power to process the data. However, OpenAir’s reporting engine is very powerful, so with the combined power of reporting and business intelligence connector and scripting, which can access the data from the published report, you can circumvent this potential issue. Within scripting, you have all the flexibility necessary to do any next step.

However, you’ll need a Business Intelligence Connector to enjoy all these benefits. It is the key to reporting in OpenAir and the foundation upon which the script is based. The OpenAir Business Intelligence Connector is relatively inexpensive, fortunately.

Bottom Line

The team behind Top Step understands the importance of reporting and analytics in a PSA tool. You can have a very powerful solution by taking advantage of the power of OpenAir reporting, OpenAir’s Business Intelligence Connector, and Scripting. We continue to discover innovative ways scripting can bridge a gap, automate a process, or provide efficiencies in providing the data you need to manage your projects and PS business and aid in faster decision-making. If you find a need that standard reporting is not solving – let’s talk.

Contact us for more tips and updates.