Unveiling Omni Analytics: Unlock data potential by balancing flexibility and governance

6 min readJan 10, 2024

Data is the currency of the modern age, and harnessing its power efficiently is a challenge faced by organizations of every industry and size. In the realm of Business Intelligence (BI), Omni emerges as a transformative solution, which balances the governance of a centralized data model with the speed and flexibility of SQL and workbook-based tools into an intuitive visual analytics platform to serve both internal and embedded analytics use cases. This revolutionary tool addresses data challenges head-on, empowering users to leverage the full potential of their data.

Omni: Transformative Business Intelligence

Omni’s core strength lies in its ability to not just deliver speed and flexibility — typical of analytics tools — but also ensure governance through a structured data model. This ensures that while users quickly explore the depths of their data, they do so within a controlled environment that maintains accuracy and reliability The result is an analytics platform that helps data teams scale their impact and focus on strategic projects, while enabling the business to easily explore data and trust the results.

The Omni team possesses extensive expertise in Looker, with its founders originating from Looker. Omni establishes consistency through a unified data model while promoting SQL independence. In this approach, the strengths of Looker align seamlessly with the resolution of its limitations.

Notable Features

Omni’s feature set mirrors some of the best in the industry. It supports a semantic layer and intricate data customization akin to Looker, offering a rich user experience. Additionally, its user-friendly visualization platform reminiscent of Tableau provides a familiar interface for users transitioning to Omni. Omni supports connection with BigQuery, Redshift, Postgres, Snowflake, MySql, Databricks.

In the domain of data visualization, Omni introduces the concept of workbooks, where a single workbook acts as a comprehensive report, housing multiple sheets or tiles, streamlining data presentation and analysis. With it’s workbook structure, Omni goes much further to create a comfortable environment for business users to explore than other tools with semantic layers do, especially with it’s spreadsheet formulas, Calculations.

Omni optimizes performance by caching the result set, which is shared among users based on their applicable data access permissions. Currently, the cache retention period is set to 6 hours. Additionally, Omni caches the result set in the user’s browser, facilitating quicker re-querying for individual users. In cases where users modify dimensions (e.g., Day to Week/Month), Omni utilizes the daily result set as a foundation for calculating the updated results. This cache retains the last 30 query results from a session. While caching is currently unconfigurable, documentation suggests that configurability will be introduced in the near future.

Omni embedding stands out as a valuable feature for integrating reports into internal applications like wikis, Salesforce, or any website that supports iframes. Embedded content within these applications and websites is accessible to logged-in Omni members.

Understanding Omni’s Data Model

Omni’s data model unfolds in layers to provide a balance of consistency with flexibility. The schema model mirrors the raw database tables and a shared model reflects updates and changes made by developers. This layered approach ensures a clear representation of data structures and facilitates the creation of derived dimensions and measures, while maintaining the flexibility needed for fast, ad hoc exploration. Omni also has a bi-directional integration with dbt, making it possible to seamlessly surfacing dbt model changes in Omni, pull dbt context in Omni for deeper visibility, and author dbt models from Omni model definitions.

Joining Tables and Creating Topics

Topics in Omni are curated data sets that revolve around the joining of multiple tables/views, creating an organized structure within the tool. These topics follow a tree structure based on joins with other tables, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive representation of data relationships. For example, in a Sales Topic, users might explore curated tables related to new leads, active opportunities, and key accounts.

Dimensions and Their Significance

Dimensions serve as the fundamental attributes for segmentation and grouping in queries. These can range from date/time and string to numeric identifiers, enabling users to dissect and understand their data better. Each dimension brings a unique perspective to the analysis, allowing for diverse insights.

Measures and Their Significance

Measures serve as aggregates of dimensions (Sum of Sales, Maximum Sales or Minimum Sales) or transformation on top of other measures (GrossMargin% = GrossMargin / Revenue). Aggregate defines the aggregation type of dimension i.e. count, sum, min, max, average etc.

Customization Options: Dimensions and Measures

Omni offers an array of customization options for dimensions and measures, allowing users to tailor how these components behave and appear within queries. These options range from defining aliases and display orders to specifying formats and links associated with dimensions and measures.

Building Reports in Omni

Designing reports in Omni involves a systematic process, from querying data and selecting visualization types to customizing visual elements and incorporating interactive features. The platform’s user-friendly interface streamlines this process, allowing users to create impactful reports efficiently.

Harnessing Calculations

Calculations within Omni are a powerful tool for local data computation and will feel similar to anyone comfortable with Excel or similar spreadsheet formulas. These calculations are based on the data currently within visualizations, enabling users to derive insights without extensive modifications to the underlying dataset.

Visualizations: Enriching Data Understanding

Omni’s strength lies in its diverse visualization options, offering a multitude of charts, graphs, and diagrams as well as easy options for customization with text, imagery, iframes and more. . From simple bar graphs to complex interactive visualizations like mind maps, users have ample tools to communicate findings.

Conclusion: The Versatility of Omni

In conclusion, Omni stands as a versatile and comprehensive BI solution, catering to diverse needs across industries. Its ability to merge powerful analytics with an intuitive interface positions it as a valuable resource for both enthusiasts and professionals. As technology progresses, Omni continues to evolve, providing users with a single, robust solution for their data needs.

Embrace Omni to unlock the true potential of your data and simplify complex data analysis, paving the way for informed decision-making and enhanced productivity.

How Data platr Can Support?

Data platr Inc. is a leader in data engineering and Business Intelligence (BI), offering pre-built data models specifically designed for Enterprise Applications such as Oracle EBS, Workday, Salesforce, and others. Our mission is to empower businesses by unlocking the full potential of their data. Leveraging our pre-built enterprise data engineering models accelerates the development of data pipelines, transformation processes, and integrations, resulting in significant time and resource savings.

Our expertise extends beyond data engineering to delivering comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) Analytics services. We specialize in providing tailored solutions that enable organizations to derive actionable insights from their data. With a diverse range of offerings, our BI Analytics services are designed to meet the unique needs of businesses, ensuring they harness the full power of their data for strategic decision-making.

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