New features of OneStream version 8.5

Since version 8.4, OneStream has introduced an updated look and feel, with a new logo and a transition from blue to black as the main color. In this post, we focus on the following new features:

1. Working with parameters in spreadsheets/Excel add-in
2. Send links to dashboards to colleagues using Smart Links
3. Make your dashboards more interactive with the new Menu component
4. Use richly formatted text boxes to inform your users in dashboards‍.

‍1. Parameters in Excel

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With the latest release of OneStream, you can add more flexibility to your Excel reports. Using the menu option Parameters, workspace parameters can be linked to a cell. This cell displays a dropdown menu with the options of the parameter. For each parameter, the user can choose whether it relates to the current workspace or the entire workspace:

In addition, In-Sheet Actions can be added, allowing you to run a Data Management Sequence directly from your Excel sheet, for example, to seeding or calculating data.

2. Smart Links

‍Ithappens to all of us: you send a colleague an email asking them to look at a strange number in a dashboard, and after countless back-and-forth emails, it turns out that they are seeing a different representation of the data due to other selected parameters.

OneStream has now introduced Smart Links, which allow the administrator to create predefined links with fixed parameters. These links can be created via a button and forwarded to a colleague. This opens the exact same dashboard, with the appropriate filters and parameters. The button can even generate a mailto:-link, so that an e-mail containing the link is created directly from the dashboard. The user is directed to the dashboard through the Web environment and must first log in if no active session is available. A Smart Link is created from a business rule, which since version 8 can be stored in an assembly within the workspace itself. On the button, it is activated via:

Our assembly is called Assembly85. The CreateSmartlink function in the SolutionHelper looks like this:

(In the above example, all values are hardcoded, but they can be made dynamic if needed).

3. Menu

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One of the newest additions to the dashboard components is the Menu. This menu can be created dynamically via a business rule, similar to a Tree View component. The menu is associated with a parameter that can be used in the dashboard to refresh other embedded dashboards or components. You can extensively format the menu with fonts, text and background colors and even logos.

Unique to the menu are two options:

• Auto Open: The menu expands automatically when a user moves over it. If this option is set to false, the menu must be clicked on first.
• Show Down Arrow: Highlights menu options that can be expanded by displaying a down arrow.

The menu uses a data adapter associated with a Dashboard DataSet business rule (in our case, within the assembly).

The rule for our menu is as follows:

First, the main level menu items are created as new XFMenuItems with their properties. Then the underlying and subitems are created, also as XFMenuItems. Finally, the items are linked as parent-child items, after which the menu is returned.

4. Rich formatted text boxes

Text box components now have the propertion Allow Rich Text (and even Enable Spell Check), as shown below:

Many things are possible, but the text must be entered via the text box. In our usage scenario, we want to use the richly formatted text as user instructions for the selected dashboard. However, the challenge with the defaults is that a user can change the text or the text is user-specific (via an Input Value parameter).

Manually adding the text in a Literal parameter(and setting the text box as read-only) is also a challenge because the text is not HTML-formatted, for example. Below is an example of the stored text for the "type some text" above:

A total of 33 lines! Full of letters and numbers.

What we have done is to create two text boxes. The first text box is linked to an Input Value parameter where the administrator can enter the text in the desired format. The second text box is associated with a Literal parameter with the IsReadOnly property set to true.

Next, we created a small business rule linked to a button that copies the value of the first parameter to the second. The fixed text box can then be used in the dashboard presented to your users.

Wrap Up

What version of OneStream are you currently using? Are you considering an upgrade to the latest version or want to discover how these new features can enhance your OneStream application? Feel free to contact me. I always make sure to keep up to date with the latest features and releases, so don't hesitate to get in touch to learn more about these or other enhancements to OneStream!