Hello, welcome to part 1 of 3 of the IDR Business Intelligence,
or BI Building Blocks video tutorial. This video will introduce the Building
Block project and speak to the background of the project, video two and three will
go through the A to Z in a querying scenario that leverages MicroStrategy BI, coupled with
the wide-ranging data structure capabilities of the IDR BI Building Blocks project at CMS.
From here on out we'll refer to the project in shorthand, Building Blocks. You might hear IDR
BI BB as well. What & Who are the players? Four phases here. The comprehensive data repository
currently in Teradata, petabytes worth, tens of thousands of data elements. The brains of
the operation, us. The BI layer, hosted in MicroStrategy 2020 at CMS. The comprehensive
nature of the IDR, and state of the art BI tools begets boundless analytical possibilities when
supporting the Medicare & Medicaid programs at CMS. Now that we got the high-level out of the
way, onto the nitty gritty of how Building Blocks project cuts right to the chase.
In total, the IDR contains nearly 38,000 distinct data elements.
Shucks, that's a lot of columns. Who needs all those? and, do I need them all the time? A
primary goal of the Building Blocks project is to incorporate an old adage, and we're paraphrasing,
80% of what we're usually interested in, is in 20% of the data. We cherry-picked the big-ticket data
elements that you're likely to need to serve varied CMS business questions. A lot went into
conceptualizing these data elements. What's more, there are 272 custom filters available,
and everything's laid out in logical areas for easy navigation once you land in MicroStrategy BI.
There is a search field for targeted navigation to the resident Building Blocks columns.
The Building Blocks is also a BI repository area for legacy projects in the Shared Reports area.
There are hundreds of reports here. We'll see where those are in a little bit.
Even though this BI is graphical in nature, and there isn't a hard coding area,
one may retrieve the underlying Teradata SQL generated from the GUI report assembly.
Access is managed through the standard means at CMS for data,
BI, and project resources, via Enterprise User Administration, or EUA,
job codes. The job codes are broken out between the MicroStrategy tool, and the IDR data sources.
There are two BI tool EUA codes, the DIMP one, short for data import, grants exactly that,
import functionality into the MicroStrategy portal at CMS. Every user has 100 megabytes if space for
use. This is great for those data extracts you want to add to your future queries.
No need to re-create them, merely import, and data wrangle along the way. The Web Power code
maximizes the BI tool capabilities, essentially all the bells and whistles within the BI tool. The
data is a little more nuanced. Since the Building Blocks project contains within it's nearly 1,500
data elements are from varied IDR subject areas, one would need a data EUA code, to populate those
items (columns). For example, the first EUA job code listed here grants a user access to Claims A
and B data in production. The second one allows for Claims A, B, and D, to exclude part C.
The Building Blocks project dovetails well with the IDR Data Dictionary User Interface,
or DDUI project, found from the Enterprise MicroStrategy Reports link, under Business
Intelligence. You'll need the corresponding EUA code to gain access to the DDUI project.
Once you've been granted the EUA privileges, navigate to https://portal.cms.gov, or
https://portal.cms.cmsnet in an internet browser for the log on page. Google Chrome
works well. Occasionally there's a notice an older browser might go by the way of the Dodo.
The Log in tab will require multi-factor authentication. The Log in with PIV Card
option, will rely on a personal identity verification card connected to your device.
Enter your CMS credentials, and check the Terms & Conditions box. Click Log in. Should a red-boxed
warning dialog appear, and you are required to use VPN, click on the https://portal.cms.cmsnet link.
If you use multi-factor authentication, click the My Enterprise Portal on the banner.
The My Portal region will conform to the MicroStrategy projects you are granted access to.
Building Blocks is located under IDR Business Intelligence.
Under the Business Intelligence group, choose Building Blocks.
Sorry for all the hoops. Standard operating procedure here. Thou shall
do no harm. Click Accept to acknowledge the AMA CPT disclaimer to move forward.
Ok, we've landed ... pun intended ... The Building Blocks project has its own
dedicated landing page for easy navigation to the regions of the project. Shared Reports brings you
to the main MicroStrategy interface. We'll see that in a minute. The Open Data Catalog button
opens a listing of all 1,479 data elements, and 272 filters, in a separate tab.
You can click Shared Reports to go directly to the MicroStrategy BI tool,
or back to the landing page. Oh, by the way, there's a ticker-style display
of news on the Building Blocks. This one reads that the PEAR project is being wrapped in with
Building Blocks. Awesome, more reports to choose from! And now for a shameless plug, let your
colleagues know that the Open Training Materials button brings you to this video tutorial.
For now, let's go to the Open Shared Reports area, which brings us to the main MicroStrategy BI tool.
Shared Reports contains those previously mentioned PEAR reports. Wait there's more.
The Sample Reports folder contains even more project-related goodies, like these.
These reports are present for whomever has access to the Building Blocks project, and are read-only
folders. So far, we've seen the pre-created reports in MicroStrategy projects, but where
are my own reports? You guessed it, it's the My Reports folder. This is a read, write, and delete
location, for all your own work. Only you, and the MicroStrategy Admins have access to this location.
Hovering your mouse pointer over a report, and clicking in a grey area, will run the report.
If the memory is not 'in-cache', and memory cache is purged on Sunday evening,
the report process will re-retrieve the data. So be patient on Monday morning.
When hovering your mouse pointer over the report, and choosing Edit, you will be brought
to the report assembly area, commonly known as the Design Mode. This is where the fun begins.
I know, I just dangled a carrot. Before we start creating reports, we'd be remiss
if we didn't speak to the organization of the Building Blocks columns within the project itself.
We saw the top-level folders displayed earlier in this video, there were substantive efforts made
to structure the columns in a logical manner across the IDR subject areas.
Some examples of how they're parsed include, claim codes, enrollment indicators,
provider data, and there's a GEO component. On the metrics side, there a numerous Count
columns teed up for use. As well as customized aggregation-oriented columns.
Remember the 272 pre-created filters we noted earlier? As Building Blocks became more mature,
more feedback from CMS brought on more, customized development.
These are available within the Public Objects folder, then Shared Filters folder in the All
Object pane. Usage of these will surely increase productivity across the board.
Ok, back to the default screen, and Shared Reports.
To kick off the process of creating a report, click
the Create button in the selection pane area. A dropdown reveals a wealth of functionality,
where one may create a dossier, report, document, prompt, filter, folder, and to top it all off,
the means to import external data into the MicroStrategy portal. The Add External Data
button is enabled by virtue of having the 'DIMP' EUA job code. This concludes part 1 of
3 of the MicroStrategy Building Blocks suite of video tutorials. Next up, building that report.