Why you get more out of your OneStream software with Task Manager (UTM)

According to the official documentation, this solution is described as: “The Task Manager (UTM) Solution is a way to organize workflows inside and outside of OneStream. It provides one stop for Administrators to manage and ensure the success of their processes.” That’s quite a claim. Let’s dive into the details of UTM, and what it actually does for you processes.

How does the Task Manager from the OneStream Market Place work?

The Task Manager accomplishes the following:

• Assigns Tasks based on close or process start dates.
• References workflows to be completed or reassigned.
• Allows for communication around Tasks through email and comments.
• Provides at-a-glance charts to see Task status across individual Preparers, Approvers, and Task Groups.”

Task Manager offers a dashboard and default scripts to set-up, execute and monitor your periodic processes, both inside OneStream and elsewhere. If your accounting department is still working with a decentralized activity list for their monthly close process, this is really interesting stuff.

The Task Manager solution even comes with a surprise included that can make your life much easier when you work with Extensible Documents. I’ll get back to that later in this post.

What are the pros and cons of working with the Task Manager?

So, how does the solution perform? The pros and cons that I’m experiencing are:

Pros:

+ One central overview of all tasks, with drill-through to the details.

+ Assign tasks to both users and groups. This can be done for approval as well.

+ Possible to check out documents, like Word or Excel, to make changes directly and save as linked document.

+ Can also be used for tasks outside of OneStream. For example, your GL close.

Cons:

– Holiday schedules apply to tasks and not users/ regions.

– Extracting and importing need some manual steps, such as creating named ranges, which could scare users.

Easy installation and configuration of UTM

Aside from the functionalities, another pleasant aspect of the Task Manager is that it’s so easy to install. You can literally download the solution from the Market Place and install it into OneStream within minutes.

The configuration is not complicated either. The setup is described in detail in the documentation and for a pretty advanced setup there is no scripting required. Therefore, I classify this solution as level 2: Admin Configurable. Please see my earlier post ‘OneStream Market Place in real life’ to read more about the classifications.

So, what’s the surprise?

Included in the Task Manager Solution there is an Doc Add-Ins solution. This is a great unexpected addition, as it enables you to use OneStream for your Disclosure Management.

OneStream offers the functionality of Extensible Documents, meaning you can include values, tables and other data from OneStream in an office document and update it automatically from the system. This can be used for your periodical management letter, board presentations and even your external report. However, the standard way of working with these documents is quite specific and that’s made easy within the Task Manager Solution.

Currently this solution only works with documents inside the Task Manager solution and not for other Extensible Documents.

Conclusion

Is the claim that UPM can manage and even ensure the success of your processes true? That really depends on the quality of your processes as well, so that’s a little hard to proof! However, I can certainly understand the popularity of this solution. It’s quite extensive and a fair competitor against other financial close management systems. The look and feel are nice, it’s easy to work with and a lot can be configured without coding.

Let’s discover the OneStream Market Place together

Want to know more about the OneStream Market Place? In a series of blogs, we’ll delve into the details of the Market Place and the solutions available. In the blog ‘The OneStream Market Place in real life’ you’ll find more details about the basics of the Market Place. And in the blog ‘How to install Task Manager (UTM) in OneStream’, we discussed the most important settings and tips for the configuration of UTM.

Any questions or suggestions for a Market Place solution you would like to read about? Don’t hesitate to contact me!

Do you prefer to discuss the details live? During our Finext OneStream event we’ll share our experiences as well. This event will take place in the autumn of 2019. Registration will open soon, please let me know if you’d like to receive more information about this event.