The Prism Analytics Journey, First Steps

On the previous blog, we saw what Prism Analytics is, the benefits of using the tool and how it can transform your data management and analysis. We also covered how much it improves the daily life of internal teams, providing faster and reliable insights to better decision making, with the ease of mind that the data is secured.

On this part of the journey, we will cover your first Prism Analytics experience, how to make it available and the first products you can create and deploy.  

1.       Opening it up

When we talk about using a “new” module in Workday the first thing we need to verify is if the functional area is already enabled and domains have security assigned. Prism Analytics is no different, except for an additional step that needs to be taken first.

Once Prism is purchased from Workday, the client is required to request setup through the “Manage Tenant” in Community. Workday sets it up overnight and the functional area and then the domains become available to you.

Assigning security in Prism Analytics is standard and once everything is enabled and assigned, the door to Prism will be available to you by the task “Data Catalog”. There is one little trick. You can only assign Prism Access Security Groups, so you create those security groups by the “Create Security Group” task and map to unconstrained security groups. 

2.       Bringing data to Prism Analytics

We are ready to start diving into Prism Analytics. With the task “Data Catalog” we will get to the Prism “Home Page”. That is the place where you can access all your datasets, activity, data changes and create new tables or datasets.

In Prism Analytics all the data is stored in “tables”. These tables can be created from a custom report, an uploaded file or direct connection (SFTP or API), you can even use manual input if desired. For this blog, I will get us through the process of using a custom report and a simple file upload.

Once you select your custom report and create the table schema, Prism Analytics will prompt you to “Create Data Change Task” which populates the table with Workday data. After the data change task is completed, your table is ready to be used. You can also run data change tasks as many times you desire to bring updated data to Prism Analytics, even schedule it to run by itself.

From a file, the process is even simpler, just select the file and upload it. Workday will recognize the fields, create the schema, and populate the data for you.

3..       Data Transformation

Finally, let the fun begin!

Once all your source data is populated into tables, we can start combining, editing, and transforming the data.

You will create a “Derived Dataset”, this will let you bring all your tables together. On the derived dataset you can union, join, group, filter, and add basic to the very complex calculations and more. The derived dataset is where you will make any necessary changes that will result in your final Workday Report.

4.       Publishing the Dataset and creating Custom Reports

Now, it’s time to get this data back to Workday. You will need to define the security domain that will store those fields. You can do one domain for the entire dataset and for each field if preferred. After security is completed, you click on “Publish”.

Once published you can create custom reports selecting your dataset on the “Data Source” field.

The fields will be available in your custom report that can be extended to anyone with the right security in the organization and scheduled as needed.

Following these steps, you will be able to create your first Prism Analytics derived dataset and custom report. Within those, there is so much that you can do. On the next blog, we will dive into these different functionalities with use case scenarios, you can’t miss what is to come. 

Author: Thales from Florida