ORBIT Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is ORBIT?

ORBIT (Oracle Reporting Business Intelligence Technology) assists in measuring key performance indicators and provides critical reports and dashboards to the board of education, superintendent, site administrators, central office managers, teachers and students. ORBIT replaces manual, time-consuming data gathering techniques with technologies to better adapt to changing educational strategies and business requirements. It empowers district leaders, educators and business staff with the data to make actionable decisions. ORBIT integrates data from different sources into a single location while improving the reliability and accuracy of interactive reports.

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How come I can't access all dashboards and reports in ORBIT?

Secure access to all data at San Diego Unified is of paramount importance to us so we have implemented several layers of security to enable or disable access to dashboards, reports and the data displayed to all individual users logging into ORBIT. Security is primarily based on your job classification after you successfully log into the ORBIT application. The dashboards and reports you see (including the data) is dependent on your default role with the district central office or at a school site. For example, for dashboards that display student data, Area Superintendents will see all student data for all sites, Principals will see students enrolled only at their school location, and Teachers will see only the students in the classes they teach, etc. We do understand that many different employees may wear many "different hats" not always associated with their job title. If this is the case with you or some of your staff members, simply fill out a security request form for additional access to ORBIT (found in PeopleSoft HCM under Self Service), have it approved by your principal or manager and we'll grant you access to the dashboards and reports that will best allow you and your staff to do your job better, faster, and more accurately. Please refer to the How to get ORBIT Access job aid to assist you with the security request.

What are "Interactive Reports?"

Interactive reports allow users to start at a very high level of information such as the District's Year-over-Year Attendance Percentage. You can then "drill-down" to more detailed data based on your specific criteria by clicking on charts, graphs, or data within reports. With a few clicks, you can see which areas have the best attendance, which schools are driving attendance numbers up or down and which students may need intervention to be in class more often to decrease Average Daily Attendance (ADA) revenue loss for the District. Remember, the dashboards and data you see or don't see is dependent on your level of access in ORBIT.

Why doesn't the data always match what is in PeopleSoft HR and Finance, Zangle, and Exceed?

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It will match, although there is up to a 24 hour lag. This time is necessary to load the millions of records that change every day in the various systems to keep the ORBIT Data Warehouse up to date. On many of the dashboards and reports, we have included a "data freshness date" to help you determine the last time different types of data were loaded. To verify if date is accurate, compare it to the source application (PeopleSoft, Zangle, or Exceed) to see if it matches as of the last date loaded. If not, please log a Remedy Ticket for a data issue in ORBIT so we can investigate the inconsistency. Our team thoroughly tests all aspects of the system.

Where will ORBIT improve during the next year?

ORBIT hardware and software has recently been upgraded to make it faster. Our main priority is to continuously improve the end user experience with new dashboards, reports, scorecards, accuracy and performance. Over the next year, we will support the new SIS PowerSchool application and upgrade PeopleSoft HR and Finance.