What is octo.taxi? The facts in one place

octo.taxi is an HR data platform for organizations that run Cornerstone OnDemand. This page collects the facts in one place, in plain sentences you can quote.

The facts

• What it is. octo.taxi replicates your Cornerstone OnDemand data – learning, certifications, core HR, performance and recruiting – into its own database and turns it into dashboards, answers, alerts, an org chart and an API.
• Who makes it. octo.taxi is a product of Octily GmbH, a fully remote creative studio for HR and Cornerstone OnDemand, headquartered in Berlin and working with Cornerstone since 2016.
• Who it is for. octo.taxi is built for HR leadership, L&D and talent teams, people analytics, line managers, HR IT, and the people who have to sign it off: data protection officers, legal and works councils.
• Where the data comes from. octo.taxi reads Cornerstone OnDemand through Cornerstone's own data APIs – the Data Exporter API (DEAPI) as the primary source with delta sync, and the Reporting API for a small number of views. The connection is read-only: octo.taxi never writes back to Cornerstone.
• How current it is. octo.taxi is near-realtime: it syncs every few minutes and promises that its own added data age stays at or below 15 minutes. Cornerstone's Real-Time Data Warehouse, which both reporting APIs read from, adds its own lag of about 15 minutes in production.
• The Taximeter. Every view in octo.taxi shows a taximeter: when its data was last synced, so nobody has to wonder why a change is not there yet.
• Where the data lives. All HR data is stored in AWS Frankfurt (eu-central-1): the database, its backups and the sync engine. The application runs on Cloudflare's global network.
• Dashboards. octo.taxi ships ten built-in dashboards, ready after the first sync: Compliance Cockpit, Certificates & Qualifications, L&D Operations & Impact, Classroom Training & Resources, Team Cockpit, the HRBP and CHRO views, Recruiting Pipeline, Onboarding & First 90 Days, and System & Data Quality. Any of them can be copied and made your own.
• Ask octo. Ask octo answers questions in plain English with an aggregate and its chart. It never names a person and only answers for groups of at least five people.
• Alerts. You can put an alert on a figure, for example overdue mandatory training at one site, and get a notification in the app and, if you want, by email.
• Org chart. The interactive org chart loads your reporting structure level by level, filters by department and works with the keyboard and on phones.
• API and BI. octo.taxi offers a REST API that mirrors Cornerstone's Data Exporter 1:1 (change the base URL, keep your code), a simplified API with clean names, and an OData feed with a ready-made Power BI starter model that refreshes in the Power BI service without a gateway.
• Privacy. Minimum group sizes (k-anonymity) are on by default with a floor of five, small groups are protected against being worked out by subtraction, an individual data policy decides per role who may open a single person's record, and access is recorded in an audit log.
• Languages. The interface is available in 11 languages: English (US and UK), German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.
• Prices. Pricing is by company size; the public early-bird prices start at €299 per month for up to 1,000 employees, €699 for up to 5,000 and €1,199 for up to 15,000. Above 15,000 employees the price is on request. Every plan includes the same platform, the full API and the same support.

What octo.taxi is not

octo.taxi is not a replacement for Cornerstone OnDemand: Cornerstone stays your system of record, and octo.taxi only reads from it. It is not an employee monitoring tool: there are no rankings of people, no behavior tracking and no automated decisions about people. And it is not a BI tool you have to build first – the dashboards are there after the first sync, and the OData feed is there for when you want your own BI tool on top.

Frequently asked questions

Which Cornerstone OnDemand data does octo.taxi use?

The data your portal makes available through the Data Exporter API, plus two Reporting API views for certification holders and offer-letter responses. Which objects are synced depends on your Cornerstone licence and the scopes of the API connection; an object your licence does not include is marked as not available, never shown as empty.

How up to date is the data in octo.taxi?

octo.taxi syncs every few minutes and keeps its own added data age at or below 15 minutes. On top of that, Cornerstone's Real-Time Data Warehouse refreshes about every 15 minutes in production. Every view shows its exact data age on the taximeter.

Where is my data stored?

In AWS Frankfurt (eu-central-1), Germany: the database, its backups and the sync engine. AI features are processed only within AWS regions in the European Union.

Does octo.taxi change anything in Cornerstone?

No. The connection is read-only. octo.taxi reads through Cornerstone's data APIs and never writes back.

Can managers see individual employees?

Only if your organization's data policy allows it. The policy decides per role whether someone sees aggregates only, their own reporting line, or individuals; pay, performance, recruiting and termination data need an explicit grant per role. Ask octo never answers with a named person.

Can I use the data in Power BI?

Yes. octo.taxi provides an OData feed and a ready-made Power BI starter model (a Power Query template) with six tables, measures and three report pages. The same privacy rules apply in the feed as in the app.

Is octo.taxi suitable for organizations with a works council?

It was designed with works councils in mind: minimum group sizes on by default, no rankings of people, managers compared without names, an individual data policy per role and full audit logs. The details are on the Trust Center.

What does octo.taxi cost?

The public early-bird prices start at €299 per month for organizations with up to 1,000 employees; the full price list is on the home page.

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Sources. octo.taxi Trust Center · octo.taxi API reference · Cornerstone: Real-Time Data Warehouse overview.