QUICK FILTERS
Featured
6 min read
Christine Virjee
Charts play a crucial role in conveying insights, which is why elements like chart legends are essential tools for interpreting colour variations and understanding complex data sets. Let’s dive into the nuances of chart legends with five tips designed to make your charts more impactful and easier to understand. What are chart legends? Chart legends label and help explain colour variations in your charts. When used effectively, they improve readability and prevent misunderstanding. Chart legends work best when there is more than one metric or dimension, and where colour variations need an explanation in a chart. Let’s work through a few real-world examples and tips to see how chart legends can enhance or detract from a data visualisation. Tips and real-world examples Tip #1: Use legends to explain colour variations In this first example, variation occurs when there is more than one metric and the chart legend explains their meaning. In the chart below, dark blue indicates Start of Period (SOP) Headcount, while light blue represents End of Period (EOP) Headcount. It is easy to see at a glance which number and bar corresponds to each metric. In another example, variation can be depicted when there are one or more Dimensions with more than one group selected. As shown below, the colour variation indicates Male and Female Gender – dark blue for Male and light blue for Female. Again, meaning is quickly and easily discerned with the chart legend. Tip #2: Set legend position to None to hide legend in single-colour charts What happens to chart legends when there is no colour variation? Single-colour charts such as the example below with a single metric like (EOP) Headcount over time don’t usually need a chart legend because all of the bars will be the same colour. In these situations, a chart legend is unnecessary as it only serves to repeat information. Tip #3: Hide metric names when only a single metric is included For cases where only a single metric is included, we recommend the Option to Hide Metric name as this information will likely be already mentioned elsewhere, likely in the chart title or the Storyboard page. In Tile Settings, slide the toggle for Hide Metric Name to On. For pie charts, the Hide Metric option will apply when Legend is set to None and Series named selected as Data Label. Tip #4: Choose a filter to limit chart clutter Chart legends also include the selections for the Dimensions. A selection controls what is visible on the chart, whereas a filter controls what the dataset includes. When only a single selection is made, they work similarly. However, selections show in the chart legend, while filters display on top of the chart and can be hidden if desired. Therefore, it’s best practice to choose a filter to limit chart clutter in cases where selection is used to select a single point of the data. Tip #5: Use Group legends for multiple metrics In the case that multiple metrics are included on a chart or the metric name is not mentioned anywhere else, Group legends should be turned on to avoid any ambiguity. Make your charts legendary Mastering the use of chart legends is essential for creating clear and effective data visualizations. By following these tips, you can ensure your charts are not only visually appealing but also easy to understand. Whether you're dealing with multiple metrics, color variations, or trying to minimize clutter, thoughtful use of chart legends can significantly enhance the impact of your data. Visit One Model's Help Center to learn more about custom chart legends.
Read Article
Featured
4 min read
Pria Shah
Keeping your HR data secure while ensuring the right people have the right access is crucial. Enter One Model's Role-Based Security (RBS) – the ultimate security feature to ensure data integrity and precision access control. Empower Your Team with Tailored Application Access Roles Think of Application Access Roles as your data’s first line of defense. This defines exactly which parts of One Model a user can access. Application Access Roles are tailored to distinct user personas like HRBPs, People Analytics teams, and People Leaders. Each role is fine-tuned to provide the exact tools they need, empowering them to excel and drive success in their specific functions. It’s all about precision – ensuring every user has the right access to succeed without compromising your data’s security. Guard Your Data with Data Access Roles We don’t stop at the surface. Data Access Roles within One Model takes you further, managing visibility down to the finest detail. Admins can easily grant user access to specific metrics, dimensions, and Storyboards. You can choose which data elements a user can see all the way down to the column and row levels – you’re in complete control. To maximize flexibility for role management and simplified administration, a user can belong to multiple Application Access and Data Access roles. Contextual Security Rules for Data Access Roles One Model's Contextual Data Access Rules let you grant data access based on a user's role within your organization. For example, when you create a manager data access role, you can assign rules that allow each manager to see the data of their direct reports. The best part? This rule works for all managers and automatically adjusts based on each manager's position in the company. As employees move within the organization, the rules update automatically with the latest data refresh in One Model. This means promotions and team changes seamlessly update, ensuring managers always have the right access without any manual configuration. Additionally, these rules aren't just for managers; you can apply the same logic to other relationships, such as cost centers. Why Should You Trust One Model’s Role Based Security (RBS)? Robust Security: Your sensitive data remains protected from unauthorized access, maintaining the integrity of of your information Customizable Flexibility: Tailor roles to meet your organization’s specific needs, providing precise access control Proven Efficiency: Simplify your data security management and save valuable time with a structured and straightforward system No need to juggle complex security settings. With One Model, admins can effortlessly create roles, assign permissions, and manage user access with just a few clicks. This structured, intuitive approach eliminates confusion over who can see what. Your data stays secure, accessible, and ready to power your decisions. For more information about One Model’s Role-Based Security, see the “Introduction to Role-Based Security” article in our Help Center. Have questions? Get in touch.
Read Article
Featured
6 min read
Christy Green
Multiple studies have shown that visuals improve comprehension and long-term retention compared to text alone. By leveraging tile styling in One Model Storyboards, you’re not just presenting data—you’re telling a compelling visual story that resonates with your audience and drives action and alignment. Create more than just a dashboard with One Model's stylized Storyboards. Easily communicate data-driven insights by using colors, styles, and designs that embody your company's brand. Whether you prefer uniformity across all Storyboards, unique designs for each one, or occasional tweaks to individual tiles, the creative possibilities are limitless. Case in point? Check out the Storyboards above and directly below. Real-World Impact Imagine that you’re a Director of Human Resources and need to prepare for a quarterly executive meeting with key organizational stakeholders. Your goal is to present the latest data on high-risk employees by organizational unit and demonstrate the impact of your recent initiatives on reducing risk and improving retention. Tile styling in One Model can elevate your presentation – both during and after the meeting – by visually highlighting specific KPIs that you want to stand out. Before the Meeting You can use tile styling to customize your Storyboard’s colors, making key metrics such as risk levels, retention rates, and employee engagement scores stand out. This ensures that the most important data points are immediately visible to your audience as you’re presenting. Your Storyboards can reflect your brand’s identity or your personal taste – you have the freedom to choose. During the Meeting As you present, your stakeholders are immediately drawn to the clear, visually appealing layout of the Storyboards that you’ve included in your presentation. The customized tiles help highlight trends and key insights, making your points easier to understand and more impactful. The attractive design keeps the audience engaged, and the clear visualization of data facilitates interactive discussions. Executives can quickly grasp the information, ask informed questions, and make decisions based on your insights. Sounds like the perfect meeting, right? After the Meeting After the meeting, you add your stylized Storyboard to a slide deck and share it with everyone, including those who couldn’t attend. By using distinct colors and layouts for the tiles, you make key data points stand out, so recipients can easily grasp the information at a glance. This visual clarity helps team members quickly focus on the most critical metrics and insights without needing further explanations. As a result, stakeholders can efficiently review and understand the data on their own. That means that your stakeholders have the information they need and send fewer follow-up emails and messages to you. Win-win. Tile Styling: More than Just a Pretty Feature As illustrated through the story above, tile styling in One Model is more than just a cosmetic feature; it’s a powerful tool that can transform how you and your team interact with data, resulting in the following benefits: 1. Personalized User Experience You can customize colors and layouts so your Storyboard reflects your brand’s identity or your personal preferences. This level of flexibility provides you with endless options. 2. Improved Data Visualization Custom tile styling allows you to highlight key metrics and trends effectively. By choosing specific colors and layouts, you can draw attention to the most important data points. This improved visualization helps in quick identification of trends, outliers, and key performance indicators, resulting in better and faster decision-making. 3. Enhanced Collaboration A well-designed Storyboard significantly enhances collaboration. When data is presented clearly and attractively, it becomes easier for team members to grasp and discuss insights. Additionally, customizable Storyboards can be tailored to meet the needs of different team members so you can showcase the information that’s most important to them. For more detailed instructions on tile styling, visit the One Model Tile Style Guide. Have questions? Get in touch.
Read Article
Featured
11 min read
Chris Butler
Need your Workday data delivered to Snowflake, Redshift, Azure, BigQuery? We can now provide that focused data integration capability for customers who just wish to get their data out of Workday to integrate into their own People Analytics or BI strategy. We have many customers and current prospects that have come to us to solve their challenges in accessing, obtaining, and maintaining a historic data load from Workday. Workday's tools don't allow for scale or up to date synchronization and other data integrators use the simple access points missing out on granularity, and complex transactions. One Model has the only integration that is purpose built to deliver a granular historical history and to overcome Workday's limitations in providing snapshot data and the many complex data transactions that require specialized interrogation of the API. Previously customers needed to buy our Enterprise product offering but we can now offer our Workday value proposition at an affordable entry point. We're data engineers ourselves and know the difference that our data integration can make to Workday customers. See below for detail on the offering and how we solve for Workday. Why is it such a problem to get data out of Workday? Architecture Workday’s much touted architecture of being object oriented actually causes major issues in extracting data from Workday. The need to access many millions of objects means that complexity has increased in order to pull a useful data feed. Workday objects are snapshot in nature such that a time reference must be provided which hampers retrieving a historical view. The architecture is highly efficient for a transactional system but is terrible for data access and reporting at scale. This is a large reason why you see complexity limits in the embedded reporting and analytics. In comparison to the other HRIS vendors Workday is much harder, and much slower to extract data from. Front End RaaS / Custom Reports The front-end reporting is the primary method many organizations use to get data out of Workday. Reports can be created and made accessible via API which makes automation easier. When you hear organizations say they use the API this is generally the API they refer to and it’s what most integration software vendors connect to. The interface is fine for simple reports but it fails for large extracts that need to maintain synchronization with an external data store. Retroactive changes generally cannot be seen in these snapshots so they get out of sync with the data’s true reality pretty quickly. To overcome this most organizations will configure a daily snapshot extract, a weekly extract to replace retro changes for the week, and a monthly or bi-annual extract to replace all data through history. The issue here is obviously that records changing in between these extracts won’t be seen and your data store will be out of sync with Workday resulting in analytics, reporting, and data users losing trust in the data. Large organizations have found running large RaaS reports is unreliable and prone to failure due to their size. It becomes exceedingly difficult to keep an external copy of their workday data maintained with the tools provided by Workday. The only scalable solution is to build against the larger SOAP API that you can see here . Solving for Workday Data Extraction Integration Built for Workday One Model has the only integration built for Workday that uses the larger SOAP API and has been built to overcome the challenges we see with hidden transactions and changes that are not visible/reportable in the API or front end reporting. We have spent 25,000 hours and counting on this integration. The SOAP API is the only way to run a large integration at scale and to build full historical extraction that transitions to accurate daily incremental updates incorporating retroactive changes without having to replace the entire data set. The initial extraction can take some time; a couple days for smaller organizations through to weeks for larger organizations. The data set is significant ranging into the Terabytes, workday is slow, and multiple additional calls are required to get a complete history. Have you seen One Model Data Mesh? Extract any HR data source, transform it, and load your data anywhere. Learn More Complex Transactions There are several types of transactions that are not easily accessible within the API and require specialized additional processing and decision making by our extraction software. Many of these have to do with Organizational and Reporting relationship changes, for example think about a Supervisor transfer which can be seen for the Supervisor themselves as an event but isn’t natively seen as an event for the direct reports below. The result is incorrect data and relationships that typically are not found until individuals question the data (trust us we found all these problems the hard way). We have had to build for dozens of scenario’s like the above where data needs to be understood during the transaction and Workday re-interrogated to extract the complete data set. Your average integration toolset can’t/won’t deal with this or even understand that this is a problem. Handling Workday's Maintenance Periods Every week Workday will shut down access to the API's for Maintenance, the window for this activity can vary and isn't always consistent. Any long running extraction must take into account the maintenance period, be able to pause and restart without losing data or requiring a restart. This is particularly important for large organizations and initial full data extractions that may run over these maintenance windows. How to Understand the Workday Data Model Our complete extraction will pull over a thousand objects and tables from Workday, even our core workforce data pulls several hundred tables. These must be distilled down and connected to be useful for analysis, reporting, and usage downstream. We have extensive experience delivering solutions for Workday customers and have a powerful data model providing an analytics-ready view of Workday data. A set of Fact and Dimension tables are provided that can be used directly in your Tableau, Power BI, or tool of choice. Importantly reporting relationship structures are available for immediate usage. Use these models or customize them for your own needs or simply learn from them as you build out your own approach and capabilities. Workday data delivered to Snowflake, Redshift, Azure, BigQuery With the raw and analytics-ready data created this data can be pushed out to your own data store. We can currently or will shortly support pushing data out on your own configured schedule to Warehouses: Redshift, Snowflake, Azure SQL, BigQuery File Stores: AWS S3, Azure, Google Files: SFTP What you Get under our Workday Data Essentials Service Daily data extraction from Workday. A complete historical view of Worker data incorporating hidden transactions. Analytics-ready data models for viewing or optionally editing and extending via our IDE Optional access to our Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to manage data model’s and use One Model to orchestrate your Workday data ready for usage. Data Quality and Validation Dashboards for Workday Example analytics and reporting content for Workday. Options for which modules and the integration of additional external data are available. What's It Cost and How Do I Get More Information? You've made it this far so we know it's your next question. This capability has been separated from our Enterprise product so it's now positioned as an entry point product. Pricing is based on size of the organization and is comparable to off the shelf integration tools. The One Model advantage gives you purpose built people analytics integrations, data models ready for analytics and content ready to consume. Reach out to us using the form below, we'll give you a tour.
Read Article
Featured
6 min read
Chris Butler
One Model now has the ability to extract, transform, and load your SucccessFactors data through to the most popular data warehouses in use. What's more we're unbundling this capability from our Enterprise product allowing customers to utilize the inherent value of our purpose built integrations. In addition we'll show you how to use this data delivering a set of analytics-ready data models you can use immediately with your own toolsets. This new capability is perfect for those organizations wanting to get their SF data our and build their own reporting and analytics practices. Data Extraction from SuccessFactors One Model has a purpose built integration to extract data from SuccessFactors across the OData and the SFAPI. Extracting from the OData API allows us to pull all standard tables and objects as well as custom MDF objects regardless of the amount of customization the customer has undertaken. This integration has been run from small to extremely large organizations with the biggest organization delivering over 4,000 tables out of SuccessFactors into our data warehouse. Extraction from the SFAPI may be required for some modules where full integration into the OData API has not been completed by SuccessFactors. Configuration of the feed can be made within the One Model application to select which pieces of data need to be extracted. The integration will interrogate your specific configuration and dynamically show you your available options and configurations. Extractions are typically run with an initial load and then an ongoing incremental daily feed to keep that data synchronized with SuccessFactors. Typically a destructive load is also scheduled on a monthly or bi-annual schedule to replace all SuccessFactors data to ensure accuracy. Integrate SuccessFactors data to an External Data Warehouse With your data out and our analytics-ready models processed (see the next section) customers can define a scheduled push to feed this data to an external data warehouse. The full raw data feed can number many hundreds or thousands of tables so many customers will extract and feed only what they need to their warehouse. Another option many customer choose is to feed just the analytics-ready tables over to the warehouse where the raw schema has been processed to be usable immediately. A Data Destination is configured to move this data to the external destination, our current and future roadmap supports SuccessFactors to AWS Redshift SuccessFactors to Snowflake SuccessFactors to Azure SQL Data Warehouse SuccessFactors to Google Big Query SuccessFactors to File Stores including SFTP, S3, Azure, Google, etc Destination Schedules can be set to any configuration required as shown below. Analytics Ready Data Models for SuccessFactors Customers have access to our Analytics-Ready data model templates built for SuccessFactors that can guide customers as to how to use the raw SuccessFactors data schema and make the joins and connections to generate a schema ready for analytics. Our data processing layer can be viewed in the data processing section of the application with all intermediate and materialized tables viewable and their lineage. Our data models will generate a templated set of fact, dimension, and time tables that can be used in tools like Tableau, Power BI, and MS Analysis Services. These are a great tool to learn from the experts on how this data should be connected and positioned to deliver a people analytics infrastructure. Many customers will feed these Analytics-Ready tables out to their data warehouse for immediate use. If you like our Integrated Development Environment (IDE) this is also an option if you want to use One Model to manage and orchestrate your data. We built this tooling for our Data Engineering needs and we wouldn't go back to managing hundreds of SQL files. What's It Cost and How Do I Get More Information? You've made it this far so we know it's your next question. This capability has been separated from our Enterprise product so it's now positioned as an entry point product. Pricing is based on size of the organization and is comparable to off the shelf integration tools. The One Model advantage gives you purpose built people analytics integrations, data models ready for analytics and content ready to consume. Reach out to us through the below Request a Demo Contact Us Page Or via the chat bubble in the bottom right of this page
Read Article
Ready to Get the Most Out of Your HR Data?
