New Features and Enhancements in Business Analytics Spring 2021

Starting from Spring 2021, Foundations contains the Engagement object. An engagement record links together related products and services that can originate from multiple revenue streams, such as professional services, subscriptions, and goods. By leveraging the Salesforce platform and Analytics, we aim to provide you with an accurate, relevant, and visually engaging snapshot of the metrics that matter most to you. For more information about the Engagement object, see New Features and Enhancements in Foundations Spring 2021 in the Foundations Help.

In Business Analytics, we have added a new app template named FinancialForce Engagement Analytics. Engagement Analytics embedded dashboards enable you to view and analyze the relevant KPIs for an engagement record, directly from the record page.

When you create apps using the template, you can choose to include services data from your existing PSA Analytics app, subscriptions data from your existing Financial Analytics app or both. Depending on your selection, the Engagement Analytics app contains the Engagements dataset and up to four embeddable dashboards. More information about each item is provided below.

Engagement Analytics App

Engagement Analytics leverages your existing Business Analytics app to avoid extracting the same data from your org twice. When creating an Engagement Analytics app using the design wizard, you are prompted to enter the API names of your existing PSA Analytics and Financial Analytics apps.

If you use customer engagement with PSA and want to include the services revenue stream in Engagement Analytics, provide the API name of your existing PSA Analytics app. Note that your PSA Analytics app must be updated to Spring 2021 (V11) and contain the new Project Reporting dataset. For more information about the new dataset, see New Dataset.

If you use customer engagement with Billing Central and want to include the subscriptions revenue stream in Engagement Analytics, provide the API name of your Financial Analytics app. Note that your Financial Analytics app must be updated to Spring 2021 (V11) and contain the Billing Contracts dataset. We have extended the Billing Contracts dataset to include the Engagement field.

For more information about creating an Engagement Analytics app, see Setting up Engagement Analytics Apps.

Engagements Dataset

Once your app is created, it contains a single dataset named Engagements. Depending on your choices during the app template design wizard, the dataset can contain data from the Project Reporting dataset, from the Billing Contracts dataset, or both.

Each row in the dataset represents an engagement source. This can be a row from the Project Reporting dataset or the Billing Contracts dataset.

For Project Reporting, only rows with the Object Type set to "Projects" and the Engagement field populated are included. This means that only project records linked to an engagement are included in the Engagements dataset.

For Billing Contracts, only rows with the Contract Status not set to "Superseded" and the Engagement field populated are included. Draft contracts and change requests are already excluded from the Billing Contracts dataset in Financial Analytics. This means that only active billing contracts and their line items are included in the Engagements dataset. Note that in the Billing Contracts dataset, a row represents a combination of a billing contract line item and the related billing contract. Because of this, in the resulting Engagements dataset, some values are populated from billing contracts and other from billing contract line items.

The Engagements dataset combines the relevant fields from the two datasets and joins them together to provide you with a set of common measures, dimensions, and dates. For example, the Revenue, Invoiced, Cost, and Margin measures are the basis for all Engagement Analytics dashboards. The Revenue Stream dimension enables you to identify whether an engagement source is a project or a billing contract.

In addition, the dataset contains measures, dimensions, and dates specific to each revenue stream. These are included directly from the originating dataset. For example, the various cost measures for services, or recurring revenue measures for subscriptions.

For more information about the fields included in the dataset and how they are calculated, see Engagement Analytics Dataflow Reference.

Embeddable Dashboards

Depending on how you set up your Engagement Analytics app, up to four dashboards are created. Each of them was designed to be embedded into the Lightning record page for the Engagement object. That way, you can view and analyze the relevant data for each engagement directly from the record page. For more information about embedding the dashboards, see Embedding Engagement Analytics Dashboards.

The following dashboards are available in Engagement Analytics:

Engagement Analytics Dashboards

Dashboard

Location in the Record Page

Description
Engagement Overview Page header Enables you to view the relevant KPIs for the entire engagement at a high level.
Engagement Services Services tab

Enables you to analyze the relevant KPIs for the services related to the engagement and view more information about the projects included in the engagement.

Note:

Only available if you include the services revenue stream.
Engagement Subscriptions Subscriptions tab

Enables you to analyze the relevant KPIs for the subscriptions related to the engagement and view more information about the billing contracts included in the engagement.

Note:

Only available if you include the subscriptions revenue stream.
Engagement Summary Summary tab Enables you to analyze the most relevant KPIs from all revenues streams and view more information about the engagement sources.

For more information about each dashboard, see Using Engagement Analytics.

From Spring 2021 onwards the name of the Revenue Recognition Analytics Read Access permission set changed to RevMan Analytics. This permission set provides the integration user read access to all the Revenue Management fields required by the Business Analytics dataflow.

Billing Central Analytics Permissions

We have added read access to the billing schedules object in the Billing Central Analytics Read Access permission set. This enables the Business Analytics applications to use and display data from your billing schedules.

Financial Matching Dataset

We have added the following fields to the Financial Matching Dataset:

  • Parent Account ID
  • Parent Account Name

For more information on these fields, see Financial Matching Flow Input Fields.

Aged Analysis Dashboard

We have added the Parent Account field to both the Standard View and the Custom View of the Aged Analysis table, this enables you to view the parent account associated with a transaction record.

We have increased the interactivity of the Aged Analysis dashboard by enabling more faceting options between the charts and the summary table. We have also added grouping and sorting selectors to the summary table. These selectors enable you to better organize the display of data in the table.

For more information, see Using the Aged Analysis Dashboards.

Deferred Revenue Waterfall Dashboard

The new Revenue and Billing per Period chart enables you to view your scheduled totals for revenue and billings per fiscal period as well as the deferred revenue balance.

You can now view your deferred balance amount in the Deferred Revenue Waterfall dashboard.

We have introduced a new "Type" column on the Deferred Revenue Waterfall table. This column enables you to differentiate between the amounts corresponding to Scheduled Billing, Scheduled Revenue, and Deferred Balance.

For more information, see Using the Deferred Revenue Waterfall Dashboard.

From Spring 2021 you can use the new Financial Report Builder app to create statutory financial statements and customized reports, using data derived from lenses stored in Analytics Studio. You can also perform calculations on lenses used in your financial report or statement.

To learn more about Financial Report Builder, and begin building reports using this app, see Configuring Financial Report Builder.

New Dataset

The Project Reporting dataset is now available in PSA Analytics. This dataset uses the following objects from your PSA data environment:

  • Assignment
  • Budget
  • Est vs Actuals
  • Expense
  • Milestone
  • Miscellaneous Adjustment
  • Project
  • Timecard

This dataset enables you to quickly build custom reports using data derived from core objects in your PSA data environment. To assist this process, the Spring 2021 release of Business Analytics includes a range of lenses designed to address common reporting use cases. The following lenses are now available in PSA Analytics:

  • Project Timecard and Expense Submissions by Resource
  • Budget Milestone Comparison by Project
  • Project Timecard and Expense Submission Approvals by Resource

For more information, see PSA Analytics Dataflow Reference and PSA Lenses.

Dataset Enhancements

If you are upgrading to the Spring 2021 release of Business Analytics, we recommend using the Spring 2021 version of PSA. This is to ensure optimum compatibility between the fields and data management in this version of PSA and the enhancements made to the Revenue Forecast dataset.

If you are using the Winter 2021 release of PSA and want to use the Revenue Forecast dataset or dashboard, but have upgraded to the Spring 2021 release of PSA Analytics, then you must then you must specify a default value for the Object for Version Grouping setting on your Revenue Forecast Version Details records for Region, Practice or Group (RPG) to display data from these records in the Revenue Forecast dashboard.

This is because the Object for Version Grouping field has been added to the Revenue Forecast Version object in the Spring 2021 version of PSA and controls whether an adjustment is made at an RPG level. To manually apply a default RPG value to your Revenue Forecast Version Details, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Analytics Studio | Data Manager.
  2. Click Dataflows and Recipes.
  3. Click the PSA Analytics dataflow you want to open.
  4. Search for the revenueForecastVersion_CALC node.
  5. Click the node to open it and navigate to the Attributes tab.
  6. Select the VersionGroupingPrimary field.
  7. Enter Region, Practice or Group in the Default Value field.
  8. Click Save.

The following PSA fields are now digested by the PSA Analytics dataflow and the PSA Analytics Embedded Dashboards Revenue Forecast dataflow:

  • Opportunity Worst Case Threshold (%)
  • Opportunity Expected Threshold (%)
  • Opportunity Best Case Threshold (%)
  • Opportunity Probability (%)
  • Active
  • Corp: Adjustment Value
  • Scenario
  • Object for Version Grouping
  • Include Best Case
  • Include Worst Case

The following fields have been added to the Backlog, Billings, Billing Forecast Details, Revenue Forecast and Total Project Margin (Workspace) datasets:

  • Project Company ID
  • Project Company Name
  • Project Currency ISO Code
  • Project Display ID

The following fields have been added to the Revenue Forecast dataset:

  • Actual Best Case Value
  • Actual Worst Case Value
  • Adjustment Best Case Value
  • Adjustment Value
  • Adjustment Worst Case Value
  • Forecast Best Case Value
  • Forecast Best Case Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Forecast Value
  • Forecast Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Forecast Worst Case Value
  • Forecast Worst Case Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Forecast Worst Case Value
  • Input Adjustment Best Case Value
  • Input Adjustment Value
  • Input Adjustment Worst Case Value
  • Object for Version Grouping
  • Opportunity Unscheduled Best Case Value
  • Opportunity Unscheduled Worst Case Value
  • Scheduled Revenue Best Case Value
  • Scheduled Revenue Worst Case Value
  • Total Best Case Value
  • Total Best Case Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Total Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Total Value
  • Total Worst Case Value
  • Total Worst Case Value (excl Adjustments)
  • Unscheduled Revenue Best Case Value
  • Unscheduled Revenue Worst Case Value

The following fields have been added to the Utilization Analytics dataset:

  • Unheld Resource Request Hours
  • Utilization Excluded Unheld RR Hours

Dashboard Enhancements

You can now view the value of manual adjustments made to projects, opportunities and milestones or aggregated adjustments at RPG level in the Revenue Forecast dashboard.

You can also filter and compare the revenue forecast data displayed in the Revenue Forecast dashboard using the Expected, Best Case and Worst Case scenarios. To use this functionality, you must have installed and configured PSASpring 2021 or later. For more information, see Revenue Forecast Dashboard.

FinancialForce In-App Guidance

FinancialForce In-App Guidance uses Salesforce user engagement features to deliver FinancialForce content, such as tutorials and learning paths, directly from our products.

As Salesforce delivers further user engagement features, FinancialForce will leverage their capabilities in order to make the adoption and use of our products a far simpler experience for our customers.

This functionality enables you or your administrator to activate in-app user engagement prompts to object record pages and object home pages. The following categories of prompts are available:

  • Docked Prompts: these enable administrators to display FinancialForce video tutorials in your org.
  • Floating Prompts: these enable users to view and launch updated features, and provide links to FinancialForce Learning Paths that are hosted on the FinancialForce Community.
Note:

Users must have access to the FinancialForce Community to access the Learning Paths.

To find out more about FinancialForce In-App Guidance, see the FinancialForce In-App Guidance Quick Start Guide - Spring 2021.

To find out more about Salesforce User Engagement, see the Salesforce Help.