Hi everyone, and hope you are enjoying the final weeks of 2022. We are wrapping up this quarter with a handful of BI releases regarding Cost Transparency, data sources, and bug fixes! This is a big step forward in not only making BI a more robust reporting platform for you, our users, but also providing our ApptioOne users expanded functionality they need to be successful within Apptio BI to help solve specific needs.

Read on, and take a look at our questions below to get some discussion started!

The most impactful and requested BI addition is newly added support for Custom Date Ranges with Cost Transparency data sources. With this release, we hope this will help our Cost users leverage Apptio BI to better define date ranges for visualizations and also allows for both Rolling and Comparison features, all of which you can learn more about below. 

We are coupling this with the addition of new dimensions and metrics for users with Cost Transparency 12.10.5 or later for End User Devices, an integrated application within TBM Studio, integrated with costing and end-of-life management, with estimated refresh costs for budgeting, inventory management and chargeback of end user assets to connect users to insights faster using a broadened toolkit. We want our Cost users to know they can use BI as a complimentary reporting tool alongside End User Devices in ApptioOne- which you can learn more about below. Please note that minor bug fixes as a part of this release resolve issues of Cost Transparency project not showing up in Apptio BI, and that the existing End user devices (CT Apps) group is now renamed to End user devices CT.

In addition to standard fiscal calendars, Apptio BI now support s non-Gregorian 445 custom calendars as well.

BI - Custom Date Range in CT

With custom date ranges within n Apptio BI, you can now select Month, Quarter, Half, and Year as custom periods. These custom periods are provided in addition to the existing date ranges. You can also use the Rolling and Compare options with these custom periods. Let's explore this in context below.

To use custom date periods in your visualizations within the Apptio BI visualization editor, and when using Cost Transparency as a data source, your can build in your desired dimensions and metrics as you would normally. However, now from the Date Range picker, select one of the following custom periods: Month, Quarter, Half, or Year. You can then set the Rolling or Compare option, if required. You then have multiple options: The Rolling option makes a date range relative to a period defined, and the date range will change as you move forward in time to stay in lockstep with your data visualizations. To set a rolling date range, select the Rolling check box (it is not checked by default). This checkbox is not selected by default. The Compare option allows you to compare two time periods to see how a given metric has changed over the specified periods. To use the Compare option, select the first date range, and after selecting the Compare checkbox, select the second date rage. The compare checkbox is not selected by default.

BI - Integrating End User Devices with Added Dimensions and Metrics

#CostingStandard(CT-Foundation)

Thank you for your updates, @Connor Kinkead.
We don't have end user devices in our installation. Our internal IT organization manages those, and they have their own Apptio instance.
 
The question of Apptio BI vs Report Studio is clear: our users much prefer Report Studio. Yes, we have about 20 reports created by users, most of them in the course of, or after, one of our public training sessions. NONE in the second half of this year. With one honorable exception, we never get questions about it.

Self-service reporting solutions are hard to sell: we had a similar experience with Business Objects many years ago​, and we also failed to gain traction. It might well have been, or still be, a matter of change management.
 
From my perspective, the biggest shortcoming in Apptio BI is the lack of slicers and data filters. Yes, we can change the settings of visualizations, but it's not straightforward, and certainly a lot less user-friendly than the features in Report Studio. Since we only have CT, we cannot leverage the multi-datasource capabilities of Apptio BI, which are one of its major strengths.

Hi @Guillermo Cuadrado this is great feedback. I hear your points and appreciate the honest report as always.

I know you are up to speed on much of BI's content we have available, but would better onboarding and guidance help you and your organization when it comes to BI? This is something we are very focused on improving continuously and want to emphasize that any training and/or tools that can help enable your end users we want to make available to you.

Like you said, cross-product usage is a major benefit and I want to emphasize this, but alongside that is end user enablement (hence my question above) and the ability for a multitude of users in an organization to collaborate, share, gather insights, work together on reports, etc. while taking advantage of a smaller learning curve, or even just ad-hoc reporting is essential to getting the most out of the platform. 

And yes, filters and and slicers we recognize the importance of as we head into 2023 with improvements onward. As you may know, this report level filtering is available for ApptioOne Plan users but is supported on a data source by data source basis. As we go into 2023, we will be working closely with the ApptioOne Cost Team to prioritize and support this capability.

Original Message:
Sent: 12-16-2022 01:36
From: Guillermo Cuadrado
Subject: It's Here! Apptio BI adds Custom Date Ranges and new metrics for CT data sources

Thank you for your updates, @Connor Kinkead.
We don't have end user devices in our installation. Our internal IT organization manages those, and they have their own Apptio instance.

The question of Apptio BI vs Report Studio is clear: our users much prefer Report Studio. Yes, we have about 20 reports created by users, most of them in the course of, or after, one of our public training sessions. NONE in the second half of this year. With one honorable exception, we never get questions about it.

Self-service reporting solutions are hard to sell: we had a similar experience with Business Objects many years ago​, and we also failed to gain traction. It might well have been, or still be, a matter of change management.

From my perspective, the biggest shortcoming in Apptio BI is the lack of slicers and data filters. Yes, we can change the settings of visualizations, but it's not straightforward, and certainly a lot less user-friendly than the features in Report Studio. Since we only have CT, we cannot leverage the multi-datasource capabilities of Apptio BI, which are one of its major strengths.

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Regards, Guillermo
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In our survey for preferred content for 2023, responders were lukewarm about Apptio BI (45%).
I guess it's still worth doubling down on workshops that might get them to see the light, @Connor Kinkead.
Happy holidays and a wonderful 2023! 🌲🌲🌲​