OBIEE11g using Dashboard Templates

When logging in for the first time you normally get an empty dashboard page:

Wouldn’t it be nicer if you can give a dashboard which already has some content ?

Let prep the instance config.xml

add: <DefaultName>Template</DefaultName> between the <Dashboard> tags

Now let’s make a template dashboard.

Step 1 build a nice dashboard:

Save this dashboard in the shared folder with the name ‘Template’

 

First create a folder Template:

 

Create a folder dashboards:

Next save:

Set the owner in the catalog

Create a new user:

don’t forget to assign it to a group:

Log in to OBIEE:

 

Check the catalog folder of the user to see that it’s actually saved as a personal dashboard.

This is ideal to create cooperate standard default dashboards for all users.

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OBIEE Hide “my dashboard”

Recurring OTN Question:

How can I hide my dashboard:

Goto Administration:

Next goto manage privileges:

Next goto Catalog Personal storage:

Set the privileges:

tada:

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OBIEE Handling long dashboard page names

First of all I don’t think long dashboard names are really that clever. But still if someone else is paying the bill…..

You have the risk of running out of background space:

Still you can control the names a bit by using HTML BR and NOBR tags:
BR:


NOBR:


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OBIEE Remove line below guided navigation link

If you want to get rid of the small black line below the guided navigation link:

Found these solutions here:
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1001694&tstart=0

For all dashboards:

Edit the portalcontent.css change:

to

[code]

HR {
visibility:hidden;
}

[/code]

For one dashboard only:

add a text box to the dashboard page:

Add the following code (thanks Joe!)
[code]
<script type="text/javascript">
var aElm=document.getElementsByTagName('hr');
for (var i =0; i <aElm.length;i++)
    {
        aElm[i].parentNode.removeChild(aElm[i]);
    }
</script>
[/code]
And the black line is gone:

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OBIEE Remove PDF print option for one dashboard only

Or how to get from:

to

 

add this to a textbox on the dashboard:

[code]

<script type="text/javascript">
    function RemovePDFOption() {

        var tds = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
        for (var td = 0; td < tds.length; td++) {

            if (tds[td].className != 'DashboardFormatLinks') {
                continue;
            }

            //alert(tds[td].innerHTML);
            var tHTML = tds[td].innerHTML;
            tHTML = tHTML.replace("PDF</a>","</a>");
            //alert(tHTML);
            tds[td].innerHTML = tHTML;

        }
    }
    window.onload = RemovePDFOption;
</script>

[/code]

Yeah i know this is very crude (the link is still somewhat hidden there), but if you play around with javascript .replace and indexof you can clean it up even more.

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OBIEE Remove Default button from one dashboard only

If you want to remove these from one page only:

Add a textbox to your dashboard page:

 

Check the “contains HTML markup box”

Add the following script:

[code]

<script type="text/javascript">
    function RemoveDefaults() {

        var tds = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
        for (var td = 0; td < tds.length; td++) {

            if (tds[td].className != 'DashboardFormatLinks') {
                continue;
            }

            //alert(tds[td].innerHTML);
            tds[td].innerHTML = "&nbsp";

        }
    }
    window.onload = RemoveDefaults;
</script>

[\code]

et voila:

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OBIEE Enable508

While going trough the list of configuration tags: http://knowledge.ciber.nl/weblog/OBIEE/OBIEE10340CONFIGURATIONTAGS.pdf I found this

{enable508}true{/enable508}

It changes this



Into this:

Put it between the serverinstance tag of the instanceconfig.xml

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Note: Have a look at Stijn his comment on 508 Compliancy

OBIEE Hide the page options button

I was asked on the OTN forum how to hide/remove the Page Options button on the dashboard:

A crude and simple way is to edit the dashboardtemplates.xml:

<WebMessage name="kuiPersonalizeLink">

<HTML>

<span class="minibuttonOn" style="display:none">

<a href="javascript:void(null)" onclick="return NQWPopupMenu(event,'idPersonalizationMenu',null,'top')">

&nbsp;

<sawm:messageRef name="kmsgDashboardPageOptionsMenu"/>

&nbsp;

<img src="fmap:Views/sortdesc.gif" border="none"/>

&nbsp;

</a>

</span>

<br/>

</HTML>

</WebMessage>

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OBIEE Dashboard Default Controls

Want to remove this?

This is controlled by controlmessages.xml

{webmessage name="kmsgDashboardAlternateFormats"}

{span class="DashboardFormatLinks"}
{?xml:namespace prefix = sawm /}{sawm:param insert="1"}{/sawm:param}
{/span}

{span class="DashboardFormatLinks"}
{sawm:param insert="2"}{/sawm:param}
{/span}

{span class="DashboardFormatLinks"}
{sawm:param insert="3"}{/sawm:param}
{/span}

{/webmessage}

1 = refresh
2 = print
3 = Briefing

Just comment out it in your version controllemessages.xml in th CustomMessage folder.


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OBIEE backslash in dashboard page name

We had this strange error the other night, a report with a report prompt placed on a dashboard came back with the logon screen every time the prompt was used more than once.
After some hours of hard core hacking we found that is was caused by a backslash “\” in the dashboard page title “revenue \ week”. Seems that under certain conditions this screws up the internal search for an open db connection. It seems to be occurring only with the combination report prompt and “\” in the dashboard title and certain connection pool configurations.
The solution: don’t use backslashes in your dashboard page title when using a report with a report prompt.
It’s a good thing to implement as standard policy to, the backslash is often an escape character within OBI EE.

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OBIEE Leading zeros calendar prompt

Goran did a good one:

http://108obiee.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-add-leading-zeros-after.html

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OBIEE The final skills, Creating great dashboards.

Most project we spend 70% on getting the data (ETL), 20% on creating the repository and 10% percent on creating the dashboards. Regarding step 1 and 2 most of us have enough skills do them successfully. The final step, creating the dashboard, is something we often take to light hearted.

Let's make a bold statement here: 60% percent of the dashboards we create, within six months, aren't used in the way we intended them or even worse aren't used at all.

Why? Most of them don't communicate to user in the most effective way. The user can't find what he is looking for at glance. Either we tend to overload him with data or present it in a non effective way.

If you want to master these last skills you should really read :

Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few. (http://www.amazon.com/Information-Dashboard-Design-Effective-Communication/dp/0596100167)

The current version of OBIEE has the (dis)advantage that it doesn't have many charting options. This means we have put in some extra toughts in the way we put the data on the dashboards.

In comming period I will post some examples how the findings of Stephen Few can be implemented within OBIEE.

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OBIEE Autorefresh no prompts

Ok this trick only works if you don't have any prompts on the dashboard page. They can live on other pages if you want to keep them.

Add a text element to your dashboard

Enter :

<META HTTP-EQUIV = "REFRESH" CONTENT = "900">

where 900 is the refresh time in seconds. Don't forget to check the Contains HTML Markup box.

Till Next Time.

Edit: Stijn pointed me to adding:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL" CONTENT="NO-CACHE" >

To avoid caching of the browser.

OBIEE Creating Bookmark and or Prompted URL

By default the Create Bookmark Link is enabled in the dashboard page options menu:

This can be control in the instanceconfig.xml file:

<Dashboard>
  <EnableBookmarkURL>True</EnableBookmarkURL>
</Dashboard> 

Setting this to false gives:

When selecting Create Bookmark Link you get an URL giving back the same prompt settings.

An other option is creating a Prompted URL. This stores the value of the used prompts in the URL (Like goUrl) and allows you to edit the values.

This functionality is enabled in the instanceconfig.xml file:

<Dashboard>
   <EnablePromptedURL>True</EnablePromptedURL>
</Dashboard>

The URL will look something like:

http://vmobiee:9704/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard&_scid=sccbLaQP0rs&PortalPath=%2Fshared%2FSample%20Sales%2F_portal%2F01%20Ranks%20%26%20Toppers&Page=11%20Multi%20Dim%20TopNs&Action=Navigate&col1=1&val1="7"&col2=%22D0%20Time%22.%22T05%20Per%20Name%20Year%22&val2="2007"&col3=%22D4%20Product%22.%22P04%20%20Brand%22&val3="Brand%203"

Before sending the URL to somebody you can "edit" the prompt values somewhat. If you want to this programmatically use the goUrl functionality.

You can set the "lifespan" of the bookmark with the <BookmarkExpirationDays> tags:

<Dashboard>
    <EnableBookmarkURL>True</EnableBookmarkURL>
    <EnablePromptedURL>True</EnablePromptedURL>
    <BookmarkExpirationDays>30</BookmarkExpirationDays>
</Dashboard>

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OBIEE Hidding a section

Sometime you need to hide a section on a dashboard (temporarily)

Go to the "Format Section" part of your dashboard section:

Open the "Custom CSS Style Options

"

Enable the "Use Custom CSS Style " enter display:none

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OBIEE collapse the whole dashboard with one button

I answered this one : http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=704696&tstart=0 on OTN today and decided to document it a bit beter.

First I made a "Toggle Dashboard" button jpg and put in my s_{SkinName}\portal directory (Note 1: don't forget to put in the OC4J_BI skin directory) (Note 2: when referecing this JPG, be aware that the naming is CaSeSeNsItIvE!)(Note 3: you might have to restart OC4J to let see it....)Next I made a simple dashboard: section1 with a textblock, sections 2 & 3 with the reports.

After running the dashboard I used "view source" to get the section id of section 2 & 3. Look for "saw.dashboard.onToggleSection"

In the text1 add the following script:

{td class="MinMaxCell" onclick="saw.dashboard.onToggleSection('d:dashboard~p:isca1c9kk1hb8ubn~s:l8052b1hagt86ms6',
event);
saw.dashboard.onToggleSection ('d:dashboard~p:isca1c9kk1hb8ubn~s:7rfmm0f1qd4gmllh',
event);
return false;" align="center"}{img id=""
src="res/s_MyCompagny/portal/ToggleDashboard.JPG" title="Toggle Dashboard"/}{img id="" src="res/s_MyCompagny/portal/ToggleDashboard.JPG" style="display:none"
title="Toggle Dashboard"/}{/td}{/tr}{tr}

Replace { and }.

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OBIEE Back One Page

Found an intresting one on the OTN forum today:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=683746&tstart=0

You can make your own "Go Back One Page" button by adding a textpart to your dashboard section:

{input type="button" value="Go Back One Page" onclick="history.back();"}

For a clear button have look here:

http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2008/08/obiee-making-clear-button.html

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OBIEE Hidding dashboard sections

When you make a dashboard you don't want to show the same reports to each (group of) user (s). To accomplish this there are two strategies: Create a unique dashboard for each group, which can be very labor and maintenance intensive.

Or you can make parts of the dashboard visible based on the group the user belong to.

First we have to make a report that will return at least a row if a user belongs to a specific group and no rows if the user isn't a member.

The valueof(NQ_SESSION.GROUP) returns a string with all the groups the user belongs to. Using the the POSITION function we can determine if a certain group is in the string:

POSITION('Administrators' in valueof (NQ_SESSION.GROUP) )

If the value is greater then 0 then it's in the string.

Now we add this formula to the filter:

Next goto the guided navigation dashboard section you want to toggle:

Select Reference Source Request, the selection report and how it should react.

The section is now only visible if a user is a member of the Administrators group.

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This article was original written for the Ciber Knowledge Blog:

http://knowledge.ciber.nl/weblog/?p=126