WebLearning Demo Courseware Hands-on Training Guide€¦ · Hands-on Oracle EBS R12 Human Resource...

Copyright © 2007, 2008, Harley-Hayford Courseware. All rights reserved

WebLearning Demo Courseware Hands-on Training Guide


COPYRIGHT & TRADEMARKS Copyright © 2007, 2008, Harley-Hayford Courseware. All rights reserved.

The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. If you find any problems in the documentation, please report them to us in writing. This document is not warranted to be error-free. Except as may be expressly permitted in your license agreement for these Programs, no part of these Programs may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose. If this documentation is delivered to the United States Government or anyone using the documentation on behalf of the United States Government, the following notice is applicable: U.S. GOVERNMENT RIGHTS The U.S. Government’s rights to use, modify, reproduce, release, perform, display, or disclose these training materials are restricted by the terms of the applicable Harley-Hayford license agreement and/or the applicable U.S. Government contract. Harley-Hayford®, WebLearning®, BusinessObjects, BEA, WebLogic, Cognos, Informatica, SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Hyperion, MicroStrategy, IBM and Microsoft are registered trademarks. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners All other products or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Author

Harley-Hayford Courseware

Technical Contributors and Reviewers Yosi Wilson, R&D Department.


Preface

Profile

Before You Begin This Course

Before you begin this course, you should have the following qualifications:

• Some knowledge of Databases

• Working experience with or SQL

Prerequisites

• None.

How This Course Is Organised

The WebLearning Demonstration ILT course provides step-by-step instructions on how to perform a variety of tasks for activities based on real-life work scenarios. The WebLearning hands-on series reduces the time spent investigating what steps are required to perform a task. Because the step-by-step solutions are built for practical real world situations, not only is knowledge gained through valuable hands-on experience, but also the solutions presented may then be used as the foundation for production implementation, dramatically reducing time to deployment..


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• Hands-on SOA 101

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• Hands-on Oracle Business Intelligence Server Architecture and Design

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Typographic Conventions

Typographic Conventions in Text Convention Element Example Bold italic Glossary term (if

there is a glossary) The algorithm inserts the new key.

Caps and lowercase

Buttons, check boxes, triggers, windows

Click the Executable button. Select the Can’t Delete Card check box. Assign a When-Validate-Item trigger to the ORD block. Open the Master Schedule window.

Courier new, case sensitive (default is lowercase)

Code output, directory names, filenames, passwords, pathnames, URLs, user input, usernames

Code output: debug.set (‘I”, 300); Directory: bin (DOS), $FMHOME (UNIX) Filename: Locate the init.ora file. Password: User tiger as your password. Pathname: Open c:\my_docs\projects URL: Go to http://www.oracle.com User input: Enter 300 Username: Log on as scott

Initial cap Graphics labels (unless the term is a proper noun)

Customer address (but Oracle Payables)

Italic Emphasized words and phrases, titles of books and courses, variables

Do not save changes to the database. For further information, see Oracle7 Server SQL Language Reference Manual. Enter [email protected], where user_id is the name of the user.

Quotation marks

Interface elements with long names that have only initial caps; lesson and chapter titles in cross-references

Select “Include a reusable module component” and click Finish. This subject is covered in Unit II, Lesson 3, “Working with Objects.”

Uppercase SQL column names, commands, functions, schemas, table names

Use the SELECT command to view information stored in the LAST_NAME column of the EMP table.

Arrow Menu paths Select File > Save. Brackets Key names Press [Enter]. Commas Key sequences Press and release keys one at a time:

[Alternate], [F], [D] Plus signs Key combinations Press and hold these keys simultaneously: [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del]

Typographic Conventions in Code Convention Element Example Caps and lowercase

Oracle Forms triggers

When-Validate-Item

Lowercase Column names, table names

SELECT last_name FROM s_emp;


Passwords DROP USER scott IDENTIFIED BY tiger;

PL/SQL objects OG_ACTIVATE_LAYER (OG_GET_LAYER (‘prod_pie_layer’))

Lowercase italic

Syntax variables CREATE ROLE role

Uppercase SQL commands and functions

SELECT userid FROM emp;

Typographic Conventions in Application Navigation Paths

This course uses simplified navigation paths, such as the following example, to direct you through Oracle Applications.

(N) Invoice > Entry > Invoice Batches Summary (M) Query > Find (B) Approve

This simplified path translates to the following:

1. (N) From the Navigator window, select Invoice then Entry then Invoice Batches Summary.

2. (M) From the menu, select Query then Find.

3. (B) Click the Approve button.

Notations:

(N) = Navigator

(M) = Menu

(T) = Tab

(B) = Button

(I) = Icon

(H) = Hyperlink

(ST) = Sub Tab

Typographical Conventions in Oracle Application Help System Paths

This course uses a “navigation path” convention to represent actions you perform to find pertinent information in the Oracle Applications Help System.

The following help navigation path, for example—

(Help) General Ledger > Journals > Enter Journals

—represents the following sequence of actions:

1. In the navigation frame of the help system window, expand the General Ledger entry.

2. Under the General Ledger entry, expand Journals.


3. Under Journals, select Enter Journals.

4. Review it.

Hands-on Training Guide WebLearning Demo Courseware

Copyright © 2007, 2008, Harley-Hayford Courseware. All rights reserved Page ix

Table of Contents WebLearning Demo Courses ............................................................................................................... 1

What is Business Intelligence - BI? ..................................................................................1 Evolution of the BI Tools Market...................................................................................................... 1 Limitations of the Spreadsheet and the birth of OLAP .................................................................... 3 Understanding the 12 Rules of OLAP ............................................................................................. 6 The 12 rules for characterizing OLAP products are: ....................................................................... 6

Oracle Business Intelligence and OLAP Concepts .........................................................9 Interactive Dashboard and Answers Concepts .............................................................21 Using Oracle BI Publisher................................................................................................27

Understanding Template Builder Menus ....................................................................................... 28 Navigating and Accessing Subject Areas with Answers..............................................36

Viewing Saved Requests by Dashboard ....................................................................................... 40 Viewing Saved Requests in Presentation Catalog ........................................................................ 42 Creating a Query ........................................................................................................................... 45

EPM Workspace................................................................................................................62 Navigating Workspace................................................................................................................... 63

Launching Workspace .............................................................................................................................. 64 Reviewing the Workspace User Interface................................................................................................. 68 Setting General and Explore Preferences ................................................................................................ 83 Adding Favorites....................................................................................................................................... 99 Opening Planning Applications................................................................................................................105


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WebLearning Demo Courses

What is Business Intelligence - BI? There are quite a few definitions for “BI”, however for the purposes of this course any one of the definitions outlined below will suffice. 1. “The process of collecting to collecting, analysing, discovering and distributing data for effective and better decision making” 2. “BI helps identify factors driving your business by turning information into insight” Prior to BI managers relied on intuition and common sense to make business decisions. But “gut feelings” and trial and error are no longer effective methods to manage a business. Corporations have vast amounts of data in production systems – in RDBMS’s, MDDB’s or just plain run of the mill spreadsheets - but somehow businesses cannot make enough or any sense out of them. BI strives to leverage this information to improve decision-making. Most businesses, large and small alike, are managed by means of a feedback control mechanism. The cycle starts with the development of a plan (Planning). The plan is then executed (Operations), and the results are measured. The results are then analysed and compared with the plan (Analysis). Finally, the insights gained are fed back to the planning step, and the on going cycle begins anew, enriched by the feedback from history and experience.

Evolution of the BI Tools Market With the "business automation age" came the need for corporations and eventually small size businesses to automate their everyday business processes to increase productivity, efficiency and minimise cost to remain competitive. This meant the automation of typical businesses like order processing, year - end accounting etc. The end result was a mass lay off of manual systems and as would be expected, "manual" office workers. Corporations however, realised that most of these automation process were in batch form, providing needed information in the form of paper reports for planning and analysing the business. This meant not providing instant real time information as they would like it. The result was the development of database systems to facilitate this key business requirement. Early DBM’s (Hierarchical Databases) improved information access but was somehow not "fast" enough as the corporates would like you to believe. User requirements and demands were such that DBM’s evolved into RDBMS. This meant data had to be normalised to improve access and write times. The advent of RDBM’s like Ingres, DB2 and Oracle led to the mass adoption of 1st generation report writers, often using 3GL and 4GL Report writers such as SQL, Oracle Report*Writer, Ingres 4GL etc for the production of management reports. Again, user requirements and demands were such that, 2nd generation GUI Tools like Oracle Reports, Gupta Reports, Powersoft were unleashed onto the market to facilitate “self-service” report writing by end-users to free up IT and IS resources. The highly normalised nature of RDBMS meant users could not make sense of data structures within the context of business. The complexity of data structures meant, specialists, typically SQL programmers and DBA’s were required to write programs and reports to accommodate user requirements. These specialists were often either involved in the development of bespoke EIS and DSS applications or wrote complex code to extract information from operational systems (RDBMS’s) to populate Spreadsheets for end-user “self-service” planning and analysis. The electronic spreadsheet revolutionised the way this process was carried out, making it possible for businesspeople to quickly become more productive without having to learn programming. The ledger-sheet metaphor of spreadsheets gave users an easy-to-understand interface for working with their data. The row-and-column format provided a natural structure for comparing and contrasting numbers, and was ideally suited to perform the basic tasks of planning and analysis. Analysts could easily put


Page 2 Copyright © 2007, 2008, Harley-Hayford Courseware. All rights reserved

together budgets and plans. And by typing data from mainframe reports into spreadsheets, they could produce analysis reports. This approach and many others before had inherent limitations, which shall be discussed in the next section. Limitations of Paper Reports Remember the good old days, having to roll-up your sleeves, hack some complex 4GL, 3GL or SQL code to produce some kind of monthly or quarterly financial, sales or marketing reports? You then submit this “job” which is then printed overnight on some long green coloured paper – often via the mainframe, VMS or Unix box in the data centre. These paper reports were then handed over to the poor sales, marketing or finance teams the next morning to sift through; in order to make sense of the business. The reasons for the limitation of papers reports is obvious 1. Low volume 2. Low usability Paper can’t handle the volume of information and users can’t find information fast enough on paper. Limitations of 1st and 2nd Generation Report writers Most 1st and 2nd generation reporting applications resulted in the production predetermined reports, albeit in a more interactive format with graphical displays. There are inherent limitations with predetermined reports. In the first instance they are slow and expensive to produce and almost immediately out of date. They simply cannot answer “the next questions”, which is what analyst and decision makes are paid to do. The next question always comes-up and the next… As intimated earlier, pre-determined reports are often hand coded by the IT or IS chaps who sometimes, out of no fault of theirs, misunderstand exactly what users are asking of them. The end result is tension, the blame game and just plain unusable reports. Developers will then have no other choice but to go back to the drawing board. Surely, there must be a better way of producing or providing users with the required information in a more timely, cost effective and understandable format. Meanwhile, these pre-determined tend to have fixed Key Performance Indicators (usually 15-30) with no slice and dice or drill across capabilities. Changing Work Patterns of Managers Evolving economic factors such as globalisation, competition, fleeting customer loyalty and de-regulation of financial markets meant business requirements kept changing with users inevitably moving the goal posts. In response to economic factors threatening their very existence and or competitiveness, business managers adopted Executive Information Systems as a solution to starve off the “competition”. The average manager’s work is pretty cut out: - perform a relatively small number of key functions

• Rank, • Compare, • Trend, measure against plan

Most managers based on experience (some very unpleasant) in every industry, every department and every country perform the same relatively set of common functions with data. They will rank, compare, trend etc. and then re-act to the results by asking ‘what the heck is that number? and then driven to investigate. They are driven to take action to find out more about the number…why it’s out of line. Spreadsheets and particularly EIS systems - which are often, for cost reasons accessible by a few individuals – were deployed across islands of workstations (PC’s) with no drill-up and down, or slice and dice capabilities. The nearest to drilling and slicing were spreadsheets, using pivot tables. However as will be seen in the next section, spreadsheets, contrary to it’s reputation as the panacea to all information access problems has limited capabilities and functionalities. Limitations of EIS Systems


Page 3

As noted earlier, experience has shown that IT or IS involvement in the development of EIS Applications is basically not practical from several perspectives. · Error prone · No clearly defined requirement definition · High Application maintenance and with it cost · They are hard to iterate · Any changes requires IT or IS involvement · IT is too over worked to respond quickly enough to users. · After a few bad experiences, users stop asking new questions · Soon the EIS is out of date and falls into disuse

Limitations of the Spreadsheet and the birth of OLAP Why OLAP? Most businesses, large and small alike, are managed by means of a feedback control mechanism. The cycle starts with the development of a plan (Planning). The plan is then executed (Operations), and the results are measured. The results are then analyzed and compared with the plan (Analysis). Finally, the insights gained are fed back to the planning step, and the on going cycle begins anew, enriched by the feedback from history and experience. The electronic spreadsheet revolutionized the way this process was carried out, making it possible for businesspeople to quickly become more productive without having to learn programming. The ledger-sheet metaphor of spreadsheets gave users an easy-to- understand interface for working with their data. The row-and-column format provided a natural structure for comparing and contrasting numbers, and was ideally suited to perform the basic tasks of planning and analysis. Analysts could easily put together budgets and plans. And by typing data from mainframe reports into spreadsheets, they could produce analysis reports. The Spreadsheet Crisis As the initially wonderful results of electronic spreadsheets became commonplace, the requirements for more sophisticated planning and analysis grew. Spreadsheets kept getting bigger, and data input and maintenance requirements grew until they became unmanageable. If you are just starting to use BI Tools, you have probably already run into the limitations of traditional spreadsheet products. Thousands of spreadsheet users have learned the hard way that while small spreadsheets are easy to write, applications consisting of many large spreadsheets are unwieldy and slow. Some of the most common complaints are:

• Consolidation speed -Consolidations using file combines are slow, even on fast computers. They get slower as the size of the application gets bigger.

• Spreadsheet proliferation -Big applications contain large numbers of spreadsheets, which become hard to keep track of and maintain.

• Redundant and inconsistent data -The same data appears in several different spreadsheets. It’s all-too-easy (and embarrassing) to print reports with inconsistent information. Even if the application is well designed, it usually requires that a time-consuming macro be run to ensure that all the spreadsheets are consistent.

• Space limitations -One spreadsheet can access only as much data as will fit in RAM at one time. If spreadsheets are very large, they can run only on very powerful computers. It is difficult to work with large data base files, such as those produced by corporate accounting systems.

• Limited networkability -Multiple spreadsheet users cannot work simultaneously on the same data.

• Excel has a maximum limit of 64,000 Rows • Spreadsheets tend to present information in a row and column format, which is inherently

limited in scope for analysis and BI



• The volumes of data are so huge, that the navigation and performance issues become insoluble for spreadsheets

The Solution The main limitation of the electronic spreadsheet, and the source of all the problems listed above, is that it stores data and calculations together. This is true even in the more recently introduced 3-D, Linked, and Multidimensional spreadsheets. Spreadsheets not only perform analyses, but are used to store vast amounts of data. The solution is to handle spreadsheet data in a separate data management tool: a Multidimensional Data Base. This data base then serves as a common resource to be shared by many spreadsheet analysis applications. OLAP: A New Metaphor Many attempts to marry existing data base technology with spreadsheets have met only with limited success. The reason is simple: existing data base technology uses a transaction or record structure. This may be ideal for recording the day-to-day transactions of a business, but it is often inadequate for planning and analysis. E.F. Codd, commonly recognised as the father of the relational data base concept, summarised it best: “The more sophisticated data manipulation functions such as the statistical analyses spread over multiple parts of the data base, application of complex formulae, production of reports involving data from many parts off the data base etc., were considered to be outside the realm of “basic manipulation intended for the Relational Data Base” Analysis is a process of comparison. How, for example, do the sales for a particular month compare with the sales for the preceding month, with the same month last year, or with the business plan? And how do these sales compare by product groups, individual products, market segments, geographic regions, and so on and so on? A new data model, On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) - a Multidimensional Analytical Data Base model -began to emerge. The structure of this model is not a list of records (as exists in a relational data base) but a Table. A Table is an array of cells, much as a spreadsheet is an array of cells. The Analytical Data Base is made up of many such Tables. Tables are the natural structure for comparing and contrasting, the essence of the analytical process, and the reason why the electronic spreadsheet is so well suited for planning and analysis. It is a side-by-side as opposed to a one-by-one structure. An Analytical Data Base is a synthesis of apparent contradictions. It should have the benefits of traditional data bases but be cell-oriented like a spreadsheet. It must overcome the data-management limitations of the spreadsheet but retain the easy-to- use spreadsheet interface. Spreadsheets – A two Dimensional Interface. The spreadsheet is, and will continue to be, the ideal user interface for planning and analysis. Not only is there a tremendous training investment in the user community, but spreadsheet vendors continue to develop and refine presentation-quality features. BI Tools is designed to take advantage of what you already know, to allow you access to the real power of the microcomputer on your desk.


Page 5

Figure - Business Analysts Like Spreadsheets but Spreadsheets Are “2D”

What if you have many dimensions? Add more headers and create headaches? And what if you have more than one “Market”? Do you:

• Add a sheet for each • 5 Markets = 5 Sheets • A problem begins…

Figure - Multi-Dimensional = Multi-Sheet How about by Product and Market?

• 5 Markets BY 5 Products = 25 Sheets! • You are entering “Spreadsheet Hell” • What about Pivot tables?



Figure - Multi-Sheet = Nightmare OLAP databases manages the powerful Multidimensional Data Base entirely via the OLAP Cube and tightly integrates with Excel spreadsheet that you use every day. The only difference is an additional item on the main menu bar. With minimal investment in learning, you will be fully prepared to take advantage of the most advanced analysis tools without ever leaving the environment you know and in which you work most efficiently. You will be able to input, import, export, analyze, and report data using your existing skills and knowledge base.

Understanding the 12 Rules of OLAP As indicated earlier, the term online analytical processing was initially coined by E. F. Codd in 1993. In his white paper for Arbor Software entitled “Providing OLAP to User Analysts: An IT Mandate,” Codd established 12 rules that are the foundation of OLAP today. The term was meant to distinguish clearly the new paradigm from traditional OLTP. Whereas OLTP focuses on handling and storing all of the information in an operational system needed to run the daily business quickly and efficiently, OLAP focuses on analyzing corporate data from different viewpoints and levels of granularity and aggregation, as well as analyzing historical and projected data for the purpose of decision making.

The 12 rules for characterizing OLAP products are: 1. Multidimensional conceptual view 2. Transparency 3. Accessibility 4. Consistent reporting performance 5. Client/server architecture 6. Generic dimensionality 7. Dynamic sparse matrix handling 8. Multi-user support 9. Unrestricted cross-dimensional operations 10. Intuitive data manipulation 11. Flexible reporting 12. Unlimited dimensions and aggregation levels Let’s have a closer look at these rules to better understand them. 1. Multidimensional Conceptual View Business analysts naturally view the enterprise’s universe in a multidimensional way. For example, they look at the revenues of sales related to customers, sales areas, products or product groups, and certain time periods. Accordingly the multidimensional paradigm tries to resemble this perception of the business as closely as possible in the models. This enables business analysts to understand, navigate, and manipulate OLAP models more easily and intuitively than they can with traditional database models (for example, entity-relationship models). In addition to the slice and dice capabilities that enable users to navigate to, select, and focus on specific parts of the information in the multidimensional model, hierarchical structures are provided, allowing users to analyze the key business measures at different levels of detail and aggregation. These operations are known as drill down to see more detailed information or roll up to look at aggregated information on an overview level.


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2. Transparency The multidimensional analysis capabilities should be provided seamlessly regardless of the choice of the user-interface layer and the physical data store of the solution. This gives users the flexibility to choose a presentation tool that suits their needs (for example, a spreadsheet, a traditional reporting tool, or a desktop OLAP tool) and therby benefit from multidimensional analysis without having to deal with the specifics of the data storage technology (for example, a file system or relational database). 3. Accessibility This rule demands that OLAP solutions be able to access and combine information from the various data sources of the enterprise and present all the information in a multidimensional structure to users. This establishes some sort of functionally rich middleware role for OLAP solutions, with the OLAP engine sitting between the heterogeneous data sources and the OLAP presentation layer. 4. Consistent Reporting Performance Consistent reporting performance is key to maintaining the ease-of-use and speed of thought navigation and analysis capabilities required in bringing OLAP to the end user. This rule should also hold for large databases and increasing numbers of dimensions. To ensure consistent, linear response times, OLAP solutions usually use precalculations during the population of the multidimensional model. This has an impact on the time needed to populate the model and the storage space used. Usually a trade-off has to be made between response time, time needed for population, and storage requirements. 5. Client/Server Architecture The client/server architecture is a key enabler of scalability in terms of model size, number of users, and workload. Especially with Business Intelligence solutions like data marts, which are iterative and subject to growth, this rule is very important. In order to scale the solution according to the evolving business requirements, the architecture of the OLAP solution should provide components (or building blocks) that support well-defined interfaces and can be placed on different computing platforms. The more advanced OLAP solutions support many different client products (including other vendors’ products) through a standard application programming interface (API) to handle the presentation and navigation. Thin-client architectures, like Web-enabled OLAP solutions, also show the benefits of good client/server architectures in terms of deployability and easy systems management, especially for solutions with large user communities. The client/server architecture is not limited, however, to the differentiation of the presentation layer from the processing and calculation layer. It also makes a lot of sense when applied to the calculation engine itself. Good OLAP architectures, for example, allow for seamless partitioning of the multidimensional model into more than one physical model, to utilize the capacity of multiple processors to satisfy user requests and to load and calculate the model in a client/server computing paradigm. 6. Generic Dimensionality With this rule, Codd postulates that each dimension should be equivalent in both its structure and operational capabilities. However, he does allow additional operational capabilities to be granted to selected dimensions (for example, the Time dimension). Thus OLAP tools can be used for multiple purposes and many different application areas, not just for a specific business subject area. 7. Dynamic Sparse Matrix Handling It should be possible to adjust the physical schema of an OLAP solution based on the actual distribution of the data values in the input data. If the physical layout of the OLAP data store cannot be altered in terms of density and sparseness (missing cells as a percentage of possible cells) of the data to be analyzed, models that appear to be practical, based on the number of dimensions and consolidation paths, or the size of the enterprise source data, may, in practice, be needlessly large and hopelessly slow. This characteristic also has an impact on the performance and access speed that can be achieved. 8. Multiuser Support



To be regarded as strategic, OLAP tools must provide concurrent access (retrieval and update), integrity, and security in a multiuser environment. 9. Unrestricted Cross-Dimensional Operations To enable more complex calculations (as needed, for example, in profitability analysis applications) the rule requires OLAP solutions to provide all forms of calculations across all dimensions, not just the Measures dimension. 10. Intuitive Data Manipulation The highly intuitive presentation layer, which enables speed of thought navigation through the multidimensional model without the need for queries or complex operations, is one of the key strengths of OLAP solutions. 11. Flexible Reporting This rule states that the reporting functions must support rows, columns, and page headings capable of containing and displaying any number of dimensions, in any combination users require to enable easy visual comparison during analysis. 12. Unlimited Dimensions and Aggregation Levels This rule was probably intended to provide maximum flexibility in terms of the models that can be built, and it seems to emphasize general-purpose OLAP solutions. In practice, however, few applications need more than 8 to 10 dimensions in a single model. Our recommendation is to design for smaller, dependent models that can be linked together according to common dimensions (using the drill across operation). This approach reduces sparseness and makes the solutions more manageable and scalable. These rules build a sound foundation of the features and functions needed to provide OLAP capabilities. Business analysts have adopted this technology on such a broad scale because it offers enormous analysis flexibility and provides a data model that so closely resembles their perception of the real-world business environment that they can understand, navigate, and manipulate the model in an intuitive way. This is the single most important characteristic that has contributed to the continuing success of OLAP Business Intelligence solutions across all industries. In Summary BI means gathering relevant data and organising it into meaningful information and evaluating the information in the context of the business or user view of business. The information gathered is then used for diverse managerial and operational applications including Trend Analysis, Reasoning Analysis, Health Insurance Claims Analysis, Consultation Analysis, Profitability, Exception, QA, etc. However, the menus of gathering, organising and accessing data for effective decision making has until recently been in environments unsuitable for effective DSS / EIS hence affecting the competitiveness of business in the global economy.


Page 9

Oracle Business Intelligence and OLAP Concepts The information revolution is underway. Organisations are generating and storing unprecedented amounts of data about their day-to-day operations. A new paradigm must be uncovered to reign in and harness these vast amounts of data. Furthermore, it is not enough to simply collect and collate large amounts of data without putting it to good use. With the advent of data warehousing, organisations have begun to discover new ways of turning data into a valuable resource. As the leader in providing information analysis technology, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE is at the fore with an array of technologies to assist in gaining the benefit from data warehouses. Decision makers at all levels of the organisation must be able to access and manipulate data in such a way that it can be transformed into an organisations most valuable asset: information. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE is the tool that allows business users to turn data into information. There are three general steps to defining, creating and using a Business Intelligence system: 1) Model end user business needs. The designers of the Business Intelligence system must obtain information needs from the various business users. The designers translate these information needs into a warehouse and semantic model. Designers must take a rigorous and disciplined approach to ensure completeness of the model. 2) Model meta-data. In conjunction with modelling the end users needs, BI designers must also model meta-data (data about the data). This information defines the data going into the data warehouse and the rules associated with this data. Since the data warehouse is subject oriented, this modelling of Meta data might cross-functional business areas. The Meta data falls into two categories: loading and user. a) Loading view: This describes all the data sources and all the rules for extracting, transforming, and loading data to the warehouse. b) End user view: Here, the model matches the business uses of the data. This is the floor plan of the warehouse that end-users use to access and explore their information. 3) Evaluate, determine, and implement extraction, transformation, and access tools. Once designers have established a model of the end user needs and accompanying Meta data in the repository, tools must be chosen for stocking the data warehouse. The final decision entails selecting the tools that end users will work with to access the information stored in the warehouse. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE provides an end-to-end range of tools to meet the needs of any enterprise scale Business Intelligence deployment and is the subject of discussion in this section. The Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Family of products Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE offers a comprehensive suite of tools that allows all types of users to access the data held in a data warehouse, including: ad hoc querying and reporting, drill-down and pivot, and full analysis (modelling, forecasting, what-if analysis, etc.). The majority of users need a straightforward, intuitive tool that allows them to easily access the data to make common business decisions. A separate set of analytical users needs to do more sophisticated, lengthy analysis in support of business strategies. Taken together, the need to access the information spans an entire organisation. The data warehouse of today has moved from the executive and analyst domain to include this broad category termed knowledge workers. This evolution is a direct result of pushing authority down the command chain; flattening the organisation. Given the more prominent role of the knowledge worker, the decision on which tools to implement becomes much more critical. To address this diverse set of knowledge worker needs, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE provides a unique and complete set of business end user access tools.



The Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE family of products are broadly grouped into the following categories: · Analytics Products (End User) · Server Products · Administration Products · Data Management Products The recent acquisition of Siebel and a plethora of other BI vendors have meant the need to reconfigure and integrate these acquisitions into the OBIEE 10.1.3.4 release. In the sections that follow, we explore each category of these world-leading products, starting version 10.1.3.4 and then on to the current new 11g platform. Analytics Products The Analytics product enables users to query the warehouse, graph results, create reports, perform drill and pivot analysis and publish results to the World Wide Web. Given such a fundamental role, this component must meet a number of end user requirements. The Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Analytics products include:

• Answers • Interactive Dashboard • Disconnected Analytics • BI Briefing Book • BI Plug-In for MS-Office • BI Publisher • Analytic Applications

OBIEE Answers OBIEE Answers is the end user query, reporting, exploration, and web publishing tool that allows users to gain rapid access to the relational data warehouse allowing them to make more informed business decisions. For non-technical, business-oriented end users, usability of access tools is the single most important consideration. OBIEE Answers provides a unique interface, where you interact directly with the data you are familiar with. There is no requirement to go to a separate conceptual dialogue to pivot, or a separate drill mode to drill. You can then save those Requests (Reports) for your own personal use, send them to other users, save them to the shared folder, or send them to Delivers for automatic refresh and distribution. Answers allow users to: · Build queries and create Requests (Reports), as well as view, refresh, schedule, distribute and print them. · You can also work offline with a local copy of a Request view (Disconnected Analytics), refresh, schedule, distribute, drill and print OBIEE Answers Requests (Reports) but not create or edit them. At the core of the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition solution is Answers, the portal to your organisation’s information capital.


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Answers is the web-based entry point for accessing Interactive Dashboards and Answers Requests (Reports), as well as any type of third-party document. It collects and consolidates a company’s BI information and presents it in a secure, organised, and personalised view to users both inside and outside your organisation. With Answers you can customise the look of your interface, manage, save, distribute, print and schedule Requests (Reports) for automated processing by Delivers from your office, home, or around the world, using the corporate intranet, an extranet, or the World Wide Web. The Answers Portal At the heart of Answers are the Folder lists which can be customised to suit your needs.

Whether you are looking for a sales report, a financial statement, or an inventory spreadsheet sheet, the Presentation Catalog provides an instant overview of all the Requests (Reports) to which users have access rights. You can also search for particular Requests (Reports) by using the Search facility. The Home page can contains up to two key Folders: · The shared folders contain files that have been saved or added to a document domain in the corporate repository and made accessible to workgroups within the corporation or organisation.



· The Personal folders (My Folder) contain Requests (Reports) users have saved for their own personal use. Varieties of readers provide top-quality viewing and printing capabilities for any type of document or file in the system. Answers lets you view, refresh, manage and distribute Requests (Reports), but not create or modify them. To do that, you need the Interactive Dashboards and/or other, third-party applications. Report Distribution Answers let you efficiently distribute Requests (Reports) both inside and outside your organisation. It provides a secure interface for aggregating, managing and sharing critical information. Extranet providers can offer exceptional customer service and reduce costs in their supply chain. Their customers can enjoy self-service access to information tailored to their specific needs. Using the powerful broadcasting services of Delivers, you can schedule the automatic refresh and distribution of Requests (Reports) to colleagues or partners via the repository, the web, an intranet, or an extranet. Interactive Dashboards Much like automobile dashboards help people drive cars, business dashboards provide visually compelling yet data-rich controls that help managers operate their business. Gauges, graphs, and maps on dashboards present data from multiple departments – Finance, Sales, Marketing, Operations, HR – and focus attention on key performance indicators or KPIs. Dashboards enable quick insights into real time data. Red zones like rising inventory levels, falling sales volume, and narrowing margins are easily identified in these visually intuitive snapshots, enabling quick corrective action. Data transforms into immediate and relevant insight in convenient at-a-glance dashboards. Interactive Dashboards allows users to access, analyse, and share corporate data over intranets and extranets for both relational (RDBMS) databases and online analytical processing (OLAP) servers. To access Interactive Dashboards, you log onto Answers via your Internet browser. You can then create and edit Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) or analyse Interactive Dashboards reports. Using Answers, you can save Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) to the Presentation Catalog repository or share Requests (Reports) with other users.

If your deployment includes Delivers, you can also schedule Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) for data refresh and distribution to other users. Relational Database Reporting Interactive Dashboards provides the ability to create Requests (Reports) based on relational databases. It allows you to:


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• interact with Dashboards Requests (Reports), by applying filters and sorts to report values, and to analyze report data using drill

• create or edit Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) and to download Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) to Acrobat PDF format or Microsoft Excel format files with the original data definition and formatting

The ability to include filters and prompts at the query level enables you to restrict the information in Requests (Reports) to the information needs of specific user groups. Standard formatting options help you create professional reports with a corporate look and feel. Interactive Dashboards license holders connect to an Oracle BI Server Repository, mapped to a corporate RDBMS data source, via Answers and Dashboards. The reporting features include the ability to customise chart and table formats, insert breaks and calculations, apply sorts, and add multiple report filters. The advanced feature set of the Interactive Dashboards provides the ability to create multiple table, charts, and reports in a single page, build sub-queries using advanced filters, and use a graphical formula editor to build custom formulas and save formulas as variables.

Federated Data Sources OLAP Data Sources enables users to create reports on multidimensional (OLAP) data sources on Hyperion Essbase, Oracle OLAP Option, Microsoft Analysis Services, and SAP BW data providers. Using OLAP Data Sources, you connect to an OLAP data provider via Answers and Dashboards, and then select a specific data cube to generate a report. You can navigate the cube then drill, slice, and dice directly on that OLAP cube. Interactive Dashboards have an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. The feature set includes synchronised grid and chart views, drilling on charts, and the ability to rank, sort, and filter values. Cascading style sheets enable you to provide a standard customised look and feel for Interactive Dashboards OLAP Requests (Reports) across your organisation. Oracle Business Intelligence Disconnected Analytics Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics provides full analytical functionality for the mobile professional, enabling fully interactive dashboards and ad hoc analysis while disconnected from the corporate network. It provides the same intuitive interface for users whether they are working in a connected or disconnected mode. Leveraging Oracle's advanced data synchronization capabilities, Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics allows for full and incremental synchronization of data with enterprise data



sources. Data is personalized for each user, maintaining all role-based security and visibility, and is compressed during synchronization, resulting in minimal data set size and fast sync times. Oracle Business Intelligence Briefing Books The content of Oracle BI Dashboard pages can be saved into a "Briefing Book" viewable by anyone with a Oracle BI Briefing Book reader. The Briefing Book provides a way to create snapshots of dashboard pages, view them offline, or share them with others. Multi-page Briefing Books have paging controls and are well-suited for presenting information to others. Briefing Books also provide a way to archive the information in a dashboard, or they can be saved locally (on a desktop, for example) and can be updated with a single click whenever the user chooses. Business Intelligence Plug-In BI Plug-In for MS-Office is an add-in tool that provides Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint with fully functional database access.

With BI Plug-In, you can access your corporate databases from Excel using familiar business terms. All BI Plug-In commands are available through the BI Plug-In menu and toolbar that appear in Excel. The result is easy and intuitive information access with guaranteed, reliable results. When you run a query, BI Plug-In automatically places the results into Excel cells. There is no need to copy or export the results to Excel. Nor are the results a static embedded object. Instead, they can be used with the full range of Excel functions, including calculations, charts, and pivot tables. BI Plug-In provides you with a one-step graphical interface that you use to build and run queries using standard Oracle BI Repository. BI Publisher The Oracle BI Publisher generates highly-formatted, pixel-perfect enterprise reports and can only be installed on to a J2EE-based application server. BI Publisher can use existing BI Answers Requests as a data-source or it can query the BI Server directly via ODBC. BI Publisher has its own file-system based BI repository to store report templates and Scheduler definitions, user security rules etc Oracle BI Analytic Applications Oracle BI Analytics is the end user ready-made Analytics Applications and web access tool that provides sophisticated analysis capabilities such as forecasting, predictive and what-if analysis. The Oracle BI Analytics Warehouse Analytics Warehouse consists of a suite of ready-made products and services that span the entire process of defining, designing, and implementing a data warehouse.


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Any Source: The data collected in the Analytics Warehouse can come from a variety of sources, including both operational (internal) and external. Traditionally, most of the data in a warehouse has come from internal operational systems such as order entry, inventory, or human resource data. However, external sources (demographic, economic, internet) are becoming more and more prevalent and will soon be providing more content to the data warehouse than the internal sources. Both sources must be harnessed and melded into a single storage container to provide end users with seamless access to both kinds of data. Any Data: Because of the breadth of users now involved with accessing the data warehouse, system designers are faced with a diverse set of requirements. Access to the data must be fast, straightforward, and intuitive. The mass of users require straightforward query and drill capabilities, while others require more sophisticated analytical capabilities. The data source must be able to handle new formats of data such as audio, video, text and spatial. Furthermore, vast historical requirements from an increasing number of users frequently lead to very large databases (VLDBs). To satisfy these requirements, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition provides both a relational and a multidimensional solution. Server Products The OBIEE Server products include:

• BI Server • BI Presentation Services • BI Java Host • BI Cluster Controller • BI Scheduler

BI Server The Oracle BI Server is a stand-alone process that maintains the logical data model which it provides to BI Presentation Services via ODBC. Metadata is maintained for the data model in a local proprietary file called the BI Repository (.rpd) BI Presentation Services Oracle BI Presentation Services provides the framework and interface for presentation of Business Intelligence data to web clients. It maintains a “Presentation Catalogue” repository on the file system for the customization of this presentation. It is a standalone process and integrates with the Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Plug-in from which it receives web client requests BI Presentation Catalog The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores content created with Oracle BI Answers and Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards. Content is organized into folders that are either shared or personal. Types of content that can be stored in the Presentation Catalog include requests created with Oracle BI Answers, filters that are applied to results, settings for Oracle BI Delivers, and information about dashboards. The BI Presentation Catalogue is a file-system repository. It’s root folder will be located under: [BI HOME]/OracleBIData/web/catalog BI Java Host



The Oracle BI Java Host provides services to BI Presentation Services for Charts, Gauges and PDF’s. The services are provided based on request-response model. BI Cluster Controller The Oracle BI Cluster Controller is used in high-availability (HA) environments where there are multiple BI Servers in operation. There will usually be a “primary” and “secondary” BI Cluster Controller, responsible for routing requests to the BI Server with the smallest request queue. BI Scheduler Scheduler is the integrated enterprise report and broadcast application that allows business users to save to the Presentation Catalog repository, push, and broadcast pre-built or ad hoc reports on corporate data in batch mode, via the Internet, Answers and Dashboards, and a wide range of output devices. Its state-of-the-art architecture and broadcasting technology make Scheduler a key component for large-scale enterprise deployments. · End users can schedule Requests (Reports) for processing and distribution at times which suit their businesses. This can help reduce network traffic congestion, and enables Requests (Reports) to be printed or refreshed on the web at off-peak times (for example, during the night). · For example, a standard production report that needs to be refreshed and distributed before every shift at an oil refinery could be scheduled by Delivers to execute every working day at 7 AM, 4 PM, and 11 PM. · End users can even set conditions so that Scheduler processes and distributes Requests (Reports) only when events such as increased revenue occur. · From an administration point of view, Delivers Scheduler is part of the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition distributed solution across a J2EE network. Scheduler generally runs on its own server in the back office, not on client machines. Unlike other enterprise reporting servers, Scheduler can execute both Oracle BI Answers and Interactive Dashboards Requests (Reports) in batch mode – report bursting. This deployment of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition offers the following advantages: · Because of its Pure web Architecture; the client machine does not require any configuration during installation. · Middleware is installed on the server so data access is centralized and easier to maintain. · An Oracle BI Server handles both login and data access. In this scenario, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition runs on a Windows PC as a thin Client application. Only the minimum required software is installed on the client PC, all middleware and online help files remains on the server, and security and access is handled through Oracle BI Server. This means no client-side administration is required. Delivers Delivers is a server-based publishing system that allows you to broadcast business information to a mass audience through the web and e-mail. Working alongside Scheduler, Delivers provides: · an e-mail-based publication mechanism. By defining a group of users as recipients for a broadcast mail, you can easily distribute information to a chosen list of people, including those in an extranet environment. The recipients in turn can be given the option to unsubscribe from the distribution list and therefore stop receiving the broadcast. · a mechanism for the secure delivery of targeted business information to groups or individuals through a password-protected portal, across an intranet, extranet, or the Internet. The installation of Delivers is separate from the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE installer used for the other server products. The Delivers email component


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This Delivers component allows you to use email either to notify a list of recipients that key information is available, or make that information directly available. Recipients can subscribe to the publications that are the most useful to them, and how often they want to receive them. You can specify the intervals at which you want to broadcast, and a condition that must be met before a publication is broadcast. You can also send a publication to a list of recipients taken from an Oracle BI report. The Delivers Report Bursting This capability allows you to process, publish and manage enterprise reports on the server. Using its enhanced report bursting feature, you can send a refreshed report to a list of recipients and ensure that these recipients will see only the data they are authorised to see according to their access rights or hierarchical level. Recipients can then take advantage of Publisher’s hyperlink navigation, versioning and comment capabilities. Delivers provides web-based administration for these publications, delivered over the web via Answers and Dashboards. Web publishers can manage all the data used in creating publications, including users, profiles and base Requests (Reports). Delivers comes with a configurable means of automatically populating and synchronising users with external source systems. This allows IT managers and information publishers to deploy easily from almost any user data source. Administration Products Administration Tool The Administration Tool is the control centre for the administration and security of your entire Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - OBIEE deployment. It allows you as supervisor/developer not only to set up and maintain a secure environment for the overall Oracle BI Enterprise Edition system, but to create powerful and easy-to-use structures for distributing information between users. This information is centralised through the file system called repositories. Developers create the repository around which the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition solution is built, defining the location and connectivity of the repository domains as well as the main administrator. With the Administration Tool, you define users and user groups. You can control user access to Oracle BI Enterprise Edition products and even the functions they contain, and manage the exchange and distribution of the Repository and Requests (Reports) of all users.



The Administration Tool lets administrators fine-tune user permissions through the use of security commands, which control with great flexibility what product functionality is available, both in the user interface and through programmability. Administrators controls access of users and groups to resources such as Requests (Reports), Repository, and also sets inheritance chains, so that permissions can be handed down to subgroups and users by default or set specifically per resource for any user or group. The Administration Tool is also the tool administrators use to create, manage, and distribute Repositories for OBIEE Answers and Interactive Dashboards users. A Repository is a file system file that contains connection parameters for one or more database middleware, and SQL structures called objects that map to actual SQL structures in the database such as columns, tables, and database functions. OBIEE Answers and Interactive Dashboards users connect to a Repository, and then run queries against a database. They can do data analysis and create Requests (Reports) using the objects in a Repository, without seeing, or having to know anything about, the underlying data structures in the database. The following diagram shows the role of Models as the mapping layer between a database schema and the Answers Workspace in Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, or the Answers and Interactive Dashboards Workspace that users use to create Requests (queries) to run against database tables.

Figure – Business Model - Semantic Layer: from Answers to the database Designers distribute Repository’s to users through a file system on the BI Server. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition and Interactive Dashboards users can then access the Repository on the BI Server to create Requests (Reports). Oracle BI Enterprise Edition - Auditing OBIEE Auditing is a web-based product that allows you to monitor and analyse user and system activity for deployments of Answers and Dashboards, Delivers, and display the results on a user-friendly web interface. This information provides valuable insight into your Oracle BI Server deployment, enabling you to optimise your Business Intelligence solution. Auditing enables you to determine who is using a particular Oracle BI Server system, how often they are using it, and what data they are accessing: You can use Auditor to:

• Monitor your Business Intelligence system by examining user activity, access rights, resource information Requests (Reports), Repositories, and system information (such as response time, Delivers details, and server load).

• Analyse system trends over daily, weekly, and monthly periods • Delete or modify unused objects and reports, in order to provide users with easier and quicker

access to essential information.


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• Accelerate analysis by using the Favourites and Dashboard features, which give you direct access to the queries you want to see.

• Optimise your data warehouse and speed up refresh actions by tracking frequently used queries. Auditor can help identify situations where aggregate tables or additional indexes can be used.

• Generate new billing opportunities by highlighting the most popular Requests (Reports)

Presentation Services Administration Console The Presentation Services Administration Console serves as a central control panel for each Oracle BI Server cluster. At any given time it shows you at a glance what servers are running in the cluster, and what modules are enabled on each server. The Presentation Services Administration Console also allows you to enable, disable and define settings for the modules on each server, thereby tuning the solution to optimise its performance.

Data Management Products Analytic Adapters With Oracle BI Server, you can retrieve and manipulate data from your existing relational database management system (RDBMS) server. Before you start running Oracle BI Enterprise Edition products, you need to make sure that you have set up the right connections. Connecting with Oracle BI Server is as easy as making sure your RDBMS middleware is installed and installing a Oracle BI Server Data Access driver. You’ll need these two components to make a connection between your database and your Oracle BI Enterprise Edition product. Once the connection is made, the user can retrieve data from your RDBMS without having to write a single line of SQL. Security Adapters With Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, you can manage the identity of your Answers and Dashboards users in a corporate LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory. LDAP allows you to store user information for all your enterprise applications — including the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition suite — in a single corporate directory, thereby improving scalability, performance and ease of administration. Using an LDAP directory provides new options for authentication, or identifying and giving system access to users, and authorisation, or the calculation of specific user rights.



• Oracle BI Enterprise Edition users who remain in the repository are authenticated and authorised via the repository, as in the regular Oracle BI Enterprise Edition system.

• Users who are externalised in LDAP, but still remain in the repository are authenticated via LDAP and authorised in the repository.

• Externalised LDAP users are authenticated in LDAP, but are authorised via a unique process that combines LDAP and the repository.


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Interactive Dashboard and Answers Concepts Interactive Dashboard and Answers Terminology and Concepts Answers Concepts Request A Request is simply a report. The Oracle BI Server returns output for the request you specify. The Oracle BI Presentation Services formats the data for presentation to you. Requests that you create with Oracle BI Answers can be saved in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog and integrated into any Oracle BI home page or dashboard. Results can be enhanced through charting, result layout, calculation, and drilldown features. BI Views Views use the presentation capabilities of Oracle BI Presentation Services to help you look at results in meaningful, intuitive ways. You can add a variety of views to results, such as charts and pivot tables that allow drilling down to more detailed information, explanatory text, a list of filters that were used to limit the results, and more. When you run a new request, Oracle BI displays results in a table, with a title preceding the table. It does this by including a title view, which displays the name of the saved request, and a table view, which displays the results in a basic table. You can customise or delete these existing views for a request, add other views, and combine and position views anywhere in the workspace. Preparing multiple views of results can help you identify trends and relationships in data. If you are customizing results for display on a dashboard, you can preview how the combination and position of views will look when viewed on a dashboard. You can then save the request with the collection of views. If the request is embedded in a dashboard, the dashboard page can also include elements such as links to additional requests of interest, related graphics, or news stories. Column Columns indicate the columns of data that your request will return. Together with filters, they determine what your results will contain. To run a request, you need to specify at least one column to return. Criteria A request criterion consists of the columns and filters you specify for a request. Dashboard A dashboard is made up of sections of information that can contain items such as results from Oracle BI Answers, external Web content, HTML text, graphics, links to other sites, embedded objects such as requests, and so on. Dashboard content is organized into pages. The pages appear as tabs across the top of the screen in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards. Dashboard Prompt A dashboard prompt is a special dashboard filter object that affects all content on a particular dashboard page, and potentially the content on additional dashboard pages. Filter A filter is a mechanism that restricts the result set, such as including only the ten best-selling items in results. Together with columns, filters determine what your results will contain. Folder A folder is an organizational construct that holds any kind of content you want to see in your dashboard, including requests created with Oracle BI Answers. A folder is similar to an operating system directory or subdirectory, or a Microsoft Windows folder.



Query A query is the underlying SQL issued to the Oracle BI Server. You do not have to know a query language to use Oracle BI Answers. Results Results are the output returned from the Oracle BI Server for the request criteria you specified. The Oracle BI Presentation Services formats the data for presentation to you. SELECT statement Oracle BI Answers uses a modified form of the SELECT statement from Structured Query Language (SQL). Oracle BI Answers sends your request criteria in the form of logical SQL to the Analytics Server. The server then generates one or more requests for data, or queries, against one or more data sources. When the server gets the raw data back, it is in the form of tables that contain rows and columns. The server merges the data from multiple sources, and when necessary, applies any additional calculations or filters that pertain to the results. The server then sends the results back to Oracle BI Answers. Subject Area Oracle BI presents data in subject areas. A subject area contains columns that represent information about the areas of your organization’s business, or about groups of users within your organization. Subject areas have names that correspond to the types of information they contain, for example, Marketing Contracts, Service Requests, and Orders. Columns also have names that indicate the types of information they contain, such as Account and Contact.

Presentation Catalog The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores content created with Oracle BI Answers and Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards. Content can be organized into folders that are either shared or personal. Types of content that can be stored in the Presentation Catalog include requests created with Oracle BI Answers, HTML content, and links to other images, documents, and sites. Oracle BI Delivers Oracle BI Delivers allows you to create your own unique form of information insurance, where any information-based problem or opportunity can be detected, and the appropriate person immediately notified through the Web or by wireless, and mobile devices. Oracle BI Delivers uses intelligence agents or Bots, called iBots. iBots are software-based agents driven by schedule or events (chained iBots) that can access, filter, and perform analytics on data based upon defined criteria. iBots provide proactive delivery of real-time, personalized, and actionable intelligence throughout the business network.


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iBots iBots provide intelligence from data spanning any source. The result is information that is timely, complete, and in context. Upon detection of a problem or opportunity (Alerts), iBots can determine the appropriate individuals to notify and deliver information to them through a wide range of devices (such as email, pager, PDA, mobile phones, and so on). Alert An alert is the personalized and actionable content delivered as a result of iBot activities. Delivery Profile Your delivery profile specifies which devices to use to deliver content to you, based on the priority of the content. You can define several delivery profiles to meet your needs, and switch among them. Oracle BI Delivers uses your active delivery profile to determine which devices should receive delivered content. Device A device is the medium used to deliver content to you. The content of an iBot can be delivered on a variety of devices, including plain text or HTML email, mobile phone, pager, and PDA. iBot An iBot is a software-based intelligent agent used to access, filter, and perform analytics on data. iBots may be event-based (chained) or scheduled. They provide constant monitoring and intelligence that spans operational and analytic sources. iBots dynamically detect problems and opportunities, determine who to notify, and how to deliver the content. Interactive Dashboards Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards provide personalized views of corporate and external information. A dashboard consists of one or more pages, which appear as tabs across the top of the dashboard. Pages can display anything that you can access or open with your Web browser, such as saved Oracle BI requests, alerts from Oracle BI Delivers, images, charts, tables, text, and links to Web sites and documents. The kinds of content that a dashboard can contain are dashboard objects, content that is saved in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, and views of folders in the Presentation Catalog. Users with appropriate permissions can use the Dashboard Editor to add content to a dashboard by dragging and dropping it from a selection pane onto the dashboard layout page, which consists of columns to align content, and sections inside of columns to hold content. The look of a dashboard, such as background colours and the size of text, is controlled by styles and skins, and can also be changed through the use of a cosmetic formatting dialog box. Dashboard creation is reserved for users with administrative responsibilities. Permission to modify dashboards (personal and shared) is granted to a broader range of users, as determined by an Oracle BI administrator. Users with the appropriate permissions and responsibilities can modify a dashboard. Dashboard Columns Columns are used to align content on a dashboard. (Sections within columns hold the actual content.) You can create as many columns on a dashboard page as you need. Every new dashboard page automatically contains one empty column with one empty section in it. The columns used in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards are not related to the columns used in Oracle BI Answers. Dashboard Objects



Dashboard objects are items that are used only in a dashboard. Examples of dashboard objects are sections to hold content, navigation links, and embedded content appearing within a frame in a dashboard. Folders Folders are organizational constructs that hold content saved in the Presentation Catalog, such as requests created with Oracle BI Answers. A folder is similar to a UNIX directory, or a Microsoft Windows folder. Pages Pages contain the columns and sections that hold the content of a dashboard. Every dashboard has at least one page. In Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, pages are identified by tabs across the top of the dashboard. Multiple pages are used to organize content. For example, you might have one page to store results from Oracle BI Answers that you refer to every day, another that contains links to the Web sites of your suppliers, and one that links to your corporate intranet. Results Results, also called reports, are the output returned from the Oracle BI Server that matches the request criteria specified using Oracle BI Answers. The default format for viewing results in a dashboard is to show them in a table. (Your Oracle BI Presentation Services administrator may have configured a different default results view for your organization.) Results can also be shown in other formats, such as charts. You can examine and analyze results, save or print them, or download them to a spreadsheet. Sections Sections appear in columns in the dashboard layout. They hold the content dragged and dropped from the selection pane, and are used to organize content within a column. Skins Skins control the way the Oracle BI Presentation Services interface appears, such as background colors, corporate logos, and the style sheets to use. Skins can be automatically assigned to users when they log on. Oracle BI administrators can customize the default Oracle BI skin and create new skins. Styles Styles control how dashboards and results are formatted for display, such as the color of text and links, the font and size of text, the borders in tables, the colors and attributes of charts, and so on. Styles are organized into folders that contain Cascading Style Sheets (files with a .css extension), images, and chart templates. Oracle BI administrators can customize some style sheets and create new style sheets. Users can override some elements in style sheets, such as table borders and text size, when formatting results in Oracle BI Answers. Presentation Catalog The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores content created with Oracle BI Answers and Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards. Content is organized into folders that are either shared or personal. Types of content that can be stored in the Presentation Catalog include requests created with Oracle BI Answers, filters that are applied to results, settings for Oracle BI Delivers, and information about dashboards. Calculations Expressions used to compute required values from existing data E/R Model An E/R model basically focuses on three things, entities, attributes, and relationships. An entity is any category of an object in which the business is interested. Each entity has a corresponding business


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definition, which is used to define the boundaries of the entity — allowing you to decide whether a particular object belongs to that category or entity. The Figure below depicts an entity called product.

Product is defined as any physical item that may be stocked in one or more of the retail stores in a company. Whether this definition is appropriate or not depends on the use to which the model is put. In this sense, an entity may be quite specific at one extreme, or very generic at the other extreme. Each entity has a number of attributes associated with it. An attribute is any characteristic of an entity that describes it and is of interest to the business. A relationship that exists between the entities in a model describes how the entities interact. This interaction is usually expressed as a verb. In the example, the relationship between Product and Retail Store is defined as the retail store stocks product. What Are Joins? Joins define the relational links between tables in the physical database. They enable you to relate data in one table to data in another table in the same database, so users can retrieve data from more than one table at a time. This helps ensure that users can access the information they need no matter where it is in the database. Proper joins are crucial to the success of ad hoc reporting, and are also required for standard reports. Once you define joins, they are available for all users, and do not have to be redefined unless the database structure changes. Users are shielded from having to know anything about how tables relate to one another. Loop Where two or more tables are linked together in multiple ways, providing more than one pathway for accessing tables in the database. The culprit in the case of a loop join is often a lookup table, because it is joined to many tables in the Universe. Loop joins can cause the joins generated to be less than optimal, decreasing performance. They might also cause you to receive unexpected results. Cartesian Product Cartesian -product queries are reports that retrieve data from tables with no joins. They take a long time to generate, and can display meaningless results. Since they can hinder performance, OBIEE allows the prevention of Objects from creating Cartesian -product queries. Where there is no join between tables, a Cartesian -product report is generated. Each row from the table is matched with each row from the other table because there is no specified join condition. These types of reports should be avoided.



Joining multiple tables using any matching columns can result in powerful reporting capabilities, but may have performance costs. You might want to restrict joins to those between primary and foreign keys only. This will limit the flexibility of your joins, but won’t incur performance costs. Outer Joins Outer joins retrieve rows from one table even if there are no matching rows in another table. They can be used in conjunction with self, non-equi, complex, or compound joins. For example, to create a report showing all sales by sales representative, and include representatives who made no sales at all, you can use an outer join. An outer join can be a left, right, or full outer join. The side of the outer join determines which rows are reported on, even if there is no match. What is an Alias Table? An alias table is a Universe table that you create from an existing (source) database table, using a button in the Tables dialog box. The result is two tables with the same contents but different names.


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Using Oracle BI Publisher XML Publisher is an enterprise standalone Java-based reporting solution that streamlines report and form generation. A primary feature of XML Publisher, also known as Oracle's BI Publisher, is the separation of data extraction from report layout. This enables you to design and create report layout templates with more common desktop applications, such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. The templates in these applications then render the XML data. With a single template, XML Publisher can generate reports in many formats (PDF, RTF, Excel, HTML, and more), and in many languages. This approach to reporting can dramatically reduce report maintenance. XML Publisher is licensed with your OBIEE application and provides a desktop plug-in to create templates in Microsoft Word. XML Publisher, also referred to as XMLP, does the following:

• Separates the data extraction process from the report layout. • Provides the ability to design and create report layouts in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. • Handles translation as separate template files. • Provides a choice of output formats. • Offers advanced options, such as bursting.

BI Publisher can be accessed via “More Products -> BI Publisher” BI Publisher is generally used for building and distributing highly-formatted static “pixel perfect” Requests (the recipients do not have to be actual End Users for Oracle BI) The BI Publisher Requests can be integrated easily into Oracle BI Dashboards (as shown below)

Upon completion of these topics, you will be able to:

• Describe XML Publisher for OBIEE. • Install the template design helper. • Describe Template Builder menus. • Creating a BI Publisher Report from Answers Request. • Creating a BI Publisher Report from BI Server. • Creating RTF Template from Class Demo. • Build tables in Template Builder. • Create XML Publisher report definitions.



Understanding Template Builder Menus The XML Publisher Template Builder is an extension to Microsoft Word that simplifies the development of RTF templates. Although Template Builder is not required to create RTF templates, it provides many automated functions that help save time. After you download the Template Builder plug-in, you can work offline designing your templates. You use Template Builder to insert application data tags into your RTF templates. In this topic, you will familiarize yourself with the main menus in Template Builder, which you will use to create RTF templates for your XML Publisher reports. Procedure

Step Action

1. If the template builder is installed correctly, you should see Oracle BI Publisher at the end of the main menu bar in Microsoft Word.


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Step Action

2. Click the Oracle BI Publisher menu.

Step Action

3. You can use the Oracle BI Publisher menu or the toolbar menus to access Template Builder functions.



Step Action

4. Click the Data button.

Step Action

5. The Data button opens the Data menu. You select Load XML Data to load a sample XML document that contains the data fields you may want to insert into your RTF layout template.


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Step Action

6. Click the Insert button.

Step Action

7. The Insert button opens the Insert menu. You use these menu items to insert the data fields into your RTF layout template.



Step Action

8. You may want to select single data fields to insert into your document by using the Field link.

Step Action

9. You can create a table and manually insert fields with processing instructions or use the Table Wizard to generate one for you. For more detailed options, use the Table/Form link.


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Step Action

10. Click the Preview button.

Step Action

11. After adding fields to the document, you may want to test your template. To preview your document, select from the output options in the Preview menu.



Step Action

12. Click the Tools button.

Step Action

13. You use the Tools menu items for translating your RTF layout template into different languages, validating the template, and exporting the template data.


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Step Action

14. Click the Help button.

Step Action

15. The Help link opens Template Builder for Microsoft Word Help, where you will find step-by-step instructions for basic Template Builder functionality.



Step Action

16. You have successfully reviewed the menus in Template Builder. End of Procedure.

Navigating and Accessing Subject Areas with Answers In this section we review some basic concepts relating to Oracle Business Intelligence Answers and Dashbaords, and establish some working definitions for use in the rest of this course. Logging on to Answers and Dashboards To access Oracle BI, you use a URL, a user ID, and a password provided by your Administrator. To access stand-alone Oracle BI: Type the URL into the address field on your browser: for example, You can also add the URL to your list of favourites or bookmarks. The login screen appears.


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Figure - displays the OBIEE login page. Enter your user ID and password and Click Login. After your login credentials are authenticated, your default dashboard page is displayed. This is usually a dashboard called My Dashboard. If you selected a language at the login screen, the Oracle BI user interface screens will appear in the language you selected. Workspace The workspace on the right contains a list of the actions you can perform and the subject areas that are available to you. The feature links listed at the top of the workspace provide access to Oracle BI functions. Example of an Oracle BI Answers Home Page The Figure below shows an example of an Oracle BI Answers home page. This is the first Oracle BI Answers page you see when clicking the Answers link (or accessing Answers from the site map if you have an Oracle BI application).

The Oracle BI Answers home page contains two panes. The selection pane on the left contains the Catalog and Dashboard tabs that you use to select items to work with. The workspace on the right contains a list of the actions you can perform and the subject areas that are available to you. The feature links listed at the top of the workspace provide access to Oracle BI functions.



Mode of Operation There are two Modes of Operation · Disconnected Mode · Online Mode Disconnected Mode In this mode you are not connected to the OBIEE Repository so you cannot connect to your data sources and create or amend queries. You can view and edit existing OBIEE Documents held on your workstation but you cannot refresh them because you are not connected to the data source. This mode could be used by someone who worked in Online Mode on their laptop in the office to create some queries and then went home and worked in Offline Mode at home over the weekend analysing the results. Online Mode In this mode you are connected to the OBIEE Repository so you are able to connect to your data sources and create or amend queries. You can also refresh existing OBIEE Documents held on your Presentation Catalog. Note: You will be working in Online Mode on this course. Once you have successfully accessed Answers and Dashboards you will be presented with a screen as illustrated below.

This is the standard Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Answers and Dashboards. Navigating in Oracle BI This section explains basic navigation within Oracle BI. When you access Oracle BI, the first screen presented is usually your personal dashboard, named My Dashboard, or a dashboard for your job function. Dashboards typically contains reports and other information for your area of responsibility.


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Using Oracle BI Feature Links This section describes the links that provide access to Oracle BI functions. The links that provide access to Oracle BI functions are located near the top of the page, if you have permissions to access those links. You can access other links as views, such as Dashboards, Answers, Delivers, Alerts, Administration, and My Account. The views that you can access are determined by your role and responsibilities. In Oracle BI Analytic Applications, the links are located near the top of the page, if you have permission to access those links. You can access other links as views, such as Dashboards, Answers, Delivers, Alerts, Administration, and My Account. The views that you can access are determined by your role and responsibilities.

Figure - displays the BI Feature Links of an Administrator in a BI Analytics Applications. Note that your dashboard may look different from the figure displayed above. The following provides a description of Oracle BI Feature Links Alerts! Accesses the Active Alerts page, from which you can view and manage your active alerts. This link appears only if you have active alerts.

Dashboards Accesses the Interactive Dashboard page, from which you can view the dashboards to which you have access.

Answers Accesses Oracle BI Answers, from which you can view, create, and manage requests.

More Products Accesses Oracle BI Publisher, Delivers, Marketing, and Disconnected Analytics.

Settings/My Account The Settings link accesses the Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration page, the Act As page, and the My Account page. The My Account page enables you to view general account information and set your preferences for the Oracle BI application.



Log Out Used to log out of Oracle BI. Always use this link to log out of Oracle BI.

Viewing Saved Requests by Dashboard Procedure To view saved requests organized by dashboard 1 Access Oracle BI and click the Dashboard tab. 2 Click the Dashboard tab in the selection pane.

Step Action

1. Click the Dashboards link.


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Step Action

2. Click the Category Sales link.

Step Action

3. Click the Product Profitability link.



Step Action

4. End of Procedure.

Viewing Saved Requests in Presentation Catalog Procedure To view saved requests as stored in the Presentation Catalog 1 Access Oracle BI and click the Answers link. 2 Click the Catalog tab in the selection pane.


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Step Action

1. Click the Answers link.

Step Action

2. Click the Learning button.



Step Action

3. Click the SH button.

Step Action

4. Click the % Change Month Ago object.


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Step Action


Creating a Query Procedure To create a query, perform the following steps:



Step Action

1. Enter the desired information into the User ID field. Enter "Administrator".

Step Action

2. Press [Tab].


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Step Action

3. Enter the desired information into the Password field. Enter "Administrator".

Step Action

4. Click the Log In button.



Step Action

5. Click the Answers link.

Step Action

6. Select the Sales History subject area by clicking the SH link in the Subject Areas list. In this example, there is only one subject area, but there could be a long list, depending on the metadata that is defined in the Oracle Business Intelligence repository, which can contain multiple subject areas. Subject areas are sets of related information with a common business purpose. Click the SH link.


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Step Action

7. In the left-hand selection pane of the Answers interface, click the Plus icon next to Times to expand it. Expand the Calendar table and click the Calendar Month Desc column to add it to your query criteria, which appears in the right pane. Click the Times button.



Step Action

8. Click the Products button.

Step Action

9. Click the Customers button.


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Step Action

10. Click the Measures button.

Step Action

11. Click the Calendar button.



Step Action

12. The query you are building has one measure and two attributes. Click the Calendar Month Desc object.

Step Action

13. Click the Prod Category object.


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Step Action

14. Click the scrollbar.

Step Action

15. Click the Sales Facts button.



Step Action

16. Click the Amount Sold (000) object.

Step Action

17. You can reorder the columns in your query by clicking and dragging them. Drag the Prod Category column in front of the columns from the Calendar table in your query. Your query criteria should look like this:


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Step Action


Step Action

19. Click the Display Results link.



Step Action

20. Use this tab to view or change the columns and filters for the request. You can specify the order in which the results should be returned, column subtotals, formatting (such as headings and number of decimal places), and column formulas (such as adding a Rank or Percentile function). You can also add or modify column filters. Click the Criteria link.

Step Action

21. This tab allows you to work with the results of the request. You can add a variety of views, including charts and pivot tables that show the data, plain or formatted text that describes the results, HTML, and more. Click the Results link.


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Step Action

22. This Displays the compound layout view, where you can combine individual views and arrange them for display on a dashboard. Click the Compound Layout button.



Step Action

23. Table: Displays the table view, where you can show results in a table. Chart: Displays the chart view, where you can show results in different kinds of charts. Pivot: Displays the pivot table view, where you can take row, column, and section headings and swap them around to obtain different perspectives. Click the Other Views link.

Step Action

24. The default results view is a simple table with a title. Your Presentation Services administrator may have configured a different default results view. Click the Other Views link.


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Step Action

25. You can combine views and position them anywhere on the page. For example, you can create side-by-side pivot tables that reflect different views of the data, charts that allow you to explore interrelationships in depth, and filters that limit the results. If the request is embedded in a dashboard, the dashboard page can also include links to additional requests of interest, related graphics, news stories, and so on. Click the Compound Layout button.



Step Action

26. Click the Criteria link.

Step Action



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Step Action




EPM Workspace EPM Workspace is a portal from which you can access EPM System Products such as Planning and Performance Management Architect. A logon screen is displayed when you access the EPM Workspace using a URL. EPM Workspace User Interface When you log on, the default EPM Workspace start page or Home page is displayed. The default is set from the Preferences dialog, Setting Preferences.

The EPM Workspace user interface includes these areas:

• Menu Bar – Commands and sub-commands that organize tasks and modules • Standard toolbar – Buttons for performing tasks • View pane – Area that provides buttons that enable jumps between panels (each panel having

a specific use and corresponding controls) and displays the list of documents and modules (Hiding this pane provides a larger content frame in which to use EPM Workspace. Select View, then View Pane to hide and display).

• View Pane or Content Area Adjuster – Setting to adjust the size of the View pane and content area.

• Content area – Area in which you view active-module documents, tasks, or files • Process bar – Location of the current folder, document, or step. • Document tab bar – Information bar specific to the current module (If multiple documents are

open, the current document tab is highlighted).

EPM Workspace, a modular business intelligence platform, providing access to management reporting, query, and analysis capabilities for a wide variety of data sources in a single coordinated environment. EPM Workspace provides access to the following content:

• Financial Reporting—for scheduled or on-demand highly formatted financial and operational reporting from almost any data source, including Planning, Financial Management, Profitability and Cost Management, Oracle BI Answers, Oracle BI Dashboards, Oracle BI Delivers, and BI Publisher

• Interactive Reporting—for ad hoc, relational query, self-service reporting and dashboards against any ODBC data source

• Production Reporting—for high volume, enterprise-wide production reporting


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• Web Analysis—for interactive ad hoc analysis, presentation, and reporting of multidimensional data

• Performance Scorecard—a Web-based solution that enables your organization to set goals, and to use scorecard methodologies to measure and monitor business performance

• Financial Management and Planning—for consolidation and planning application tasks • Profitability and Cost Management—for managing cost and revenue allocations that are

necessary to compute profitability for a business segment • ERP Integrator — a module of FDM that enables you to integrate metadata and data from an

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) source system into an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) target application.

• Oracle BI Answers—Oracle BI Answers provides true end user ad hoc capabilities in a pure Web architecture

• Oracle BI Dashboards—Oracle BI Dashboards provides intuitive, interactive access to information that is actionable and dynamically personalized based on the individual's role and identity

• Oracle BI Delivers—Oracle BI Delivers provides business activity monitoring and alerting that can reach users through multiple channels such as email, dashboards, and mobile devices

• BI Publisher—BI Publisher (formerly known as XML Publisher) offers efficient; scalable reporting solution available for complex, distributed environments

Note: Studio refers to Java or Windows components that have a rich authoring environment. EPM Workspace refers to the user thin client (UTC) or common user interface of the product. Logging on to EPM Workspace You can access EPM Workspace in two ways: through a URL provided by your administrator. Alternatively, enter the following URL: http://hostname:port/workspace/ To start a EPM Workspace session: 1. In your Web browser, go to EPM Workspace Web page. 2. Enter user name and password. Tip: The user name and password may be case sensitive. 3. Click Log On. Your start or home page is displayed. where hostname is the name of the EPM Workspace server, and port is the TCP port on which the application server is listening. The default port for EPM Workspace is 19000 if using Oracle Application Server. 19000 is the default TCP port on which HTTP server, for example Oracle Application server, is listening. This port number does not depend on used application server or servlet container (including Oracle Application server).

Navigating Workspace Workspace provides a single Enterprise Performance Management interface. It provides users access and interacting capabilities for these components:

• Financial Management application tasks • Planning application tasks • High-performance, multidimensional modeling, analysis, and reporting with Web Analysis • Financial Reporting for scheduled or on-demand, highly formatted, financial and operational

reporting from most data sources, including Financial Management and Planning • Interactive Reporting for ad hoc relational queries, self-service reporting, and dashboards

against ODBC data sources • Production Reporting for high-volume, enterprise-wide reporting



In addition, Workspace provides access and interaction with other published content, such as Microsoft Word or Excel documents. Upon completion of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Launch Workspace • Review the Workspace user interface • Set General and Explore preferences • Add favorites

Launching Workspace To start Planning, you log on to Workspace with your user name and password. Shared Services uses user names and passwords from the external authentication provider, such as Active Directory or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). On the Workspace log on page, you enter the user name and password that you use to access your network. When you select a Planning application, Planning verifies that your user name and password are valid for the application. In this topic, you log on to Workspace. Procedure

Step Action

1. Begin by navigating to the Log On page. Double-click the Internet Explorer application.


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Step Action

2. Enter the location and port of your Workspace server in the Address field, and press Enter. In this example, http://w2k3b:19000/workspace was entered for you.



Step Action

3. Click in the User Name field.

Step Action

4. The user name is not case-sensitive. Enter the desired information into the User Name field. Enter "classadmin".


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Step Action

5. Click in the Password field.

Step Action

6. The password is case-sensitive. Enter the desired information into the Password field. Enter "hyperion".



Step Action

7. Click the Log On button.

Step Action

8. You successfully logged on to Workspace. End of Procedure.

Reviewing the Workspace User Interface In Workspace, you use the Workspace menus and toolbars to open applications, search for and manage documents, and modify the view. In this topic, you review the Workspace user interface. Procedure


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Step Action

1. Begin by navigating to the Root folder. Click the Root list item.

Step Action

2. The contents of the Root folder are displayed in the content area.



Step Action

3. Use the Navigate menu to access Workspace modules.

Step Action

4. Use the menu bar to open applications and documents, manage favorites, modify the Workspace view, and access online help.


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Step Action

5. Use the Standard toolbar to manage documents in Workspace.

Step Action

6. Use the View Pane to navigate between Workspace documents.



Step Action

7. Use the content area to view active module items, tasks, or files.

Step Action

8. Close the View Pane. Click the View menu.


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Step Action

9. Click the View Pane list item.

Step Action

10. The View Pane is now hidden. You can expand it by clicking the Show button.



Step Action

11. Sort items by file type. Click the View menu.


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Step Action

12. Click the Sort By menu.

Step Action

13. Click the Type list item.



Step Action

14. Documents are now sorted by file type.

Step Action

15. Search for the GP for South report. Click in the Search field.


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Step Action

16. Enter the desired information into the Search field. Enter "south".

Step Action

17. Click the Search button.



Step Action

18. Use the Search results page to view the results of a search. The links to the Workspace documents that contain the word "south" are displayed in the content area.

Step Action

19. The links to the Workspace documents that contain the word "south" are displayed in the content area.


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Step Action

20. Open the GP for South report. Click the GP for South link.

Step Action

21. The GP for South report is displayed in the content area.



Step Action

22. Close all active Workspace document tabs. Right-click the GP for South tab.

Step Action

23. Click the Close All list item.


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Step Action

24. No active Workspace documents are displayed in the content area.

Step Action

25. Open the default Workspace user interface. Click the Explore button.



Step Action

26. The default Workspace user interface is displayed in the View Pane and content area.

Step Action

27. You successfully reviewed the Workspace user interface. End of Procedure.


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Setting General and Explore Preferences You can set preferences that change the general appearance of your Workspace user interface. For example, you can display the path for documents that you open in Workspace, and you can change the default start page. You can also set the preferences that define your default Explore folders. In this topic, you set General and Explore preferences. Procedure

Step Action

1. When you log on to Workspace for the first time, a default Shared Workspace Page is displayed. Begin by navigating to the Preferences dialog box. Click the File menu.



Step Action

2. Click the Preferences... list item.

Step Action

3. Use the General tab of the Preferences dialog box to define the general appearance of your Workspace user interface.


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Step Action

4. Use the Content field to select the default startup option. Click the Content: list.



Step Action

5. You can choose to open an application by default when you log on to Workspace. Click the Application list item.

Step Action

6. Use the Application field to select the application that opens in Workspace by default. Click the Application: list.


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Step Action

7. Click the Planning list item.

Step Action

8. In this example, you select to open the PlanBud application after logging on to Workspace. Click the PlanBud list item.



Step Action

9. Use the Prompt to Save Unsaved Files field to set up prompts to save unsaved repository items.

Step Action

10. Use the Show Path For Documents field to display the full path for opened repository items.


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Step Action

11. Navigate to the Explore preferences. Click the Explore tab.



Step Action

12. Use the Default Folder field to select the folder that is displayed when you open Explore.

Step Action

13. Navigate to the default folder. Click the Select... button.


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Step Action

14. Drill down to PlanBud Reports under Root. Double-click the Root list item.



Step Action

15. In this example, select the PlanBud Reports folder as the default Explore folder. Double-click the PlanBud Reports list item.

Step Action

16. Click the OK button.


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Step Action

17. Save the changes. Click the OK button.



Step Action

18. Preference changes become effective the next time that you log on. Click the File menu.

Step Action

19. Log off Workspace. Click the Log Off list item.


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Step Action

20. Click the Yes button.

Step Action

21. Click in the Password field.



Step Action

22. The password is case-sensitive. Enter the desired information into the Password field. Enter "hyperion".

Step Action

23. Click the Log On button.


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Step Action

24. The PlanBud application is opened by default when you log on to Workspace.

Step Action

25. Navigate to the Explore module. Click the Explore button.



Step Action

26. The PlanBud Reports folder is displayed in the View Pane by default.

Step Action

27. You successfully set General and Explore preferences. End of Procedure.


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Adding Favorites Favorites enable you to quickly access frequently used items and documents. With appropriate access permissions, you can add items to other users’ favorites. In this topic, you add a document to your favorites. Procedure

Step Action

1. Begin by navigating to the GP for South report. Double-click the GP for South list item.



Step Action

2. Use the GP for South report to review gross profit numbers.

Step Action

3. Add the current page to Favorites. Click the Favorites menu.


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Step Action

4. Click the Add to Favorites list item.



Step Action

5. Close the GP for South report. Right-click the GP for South tab.

Step Action

6. Click the Close list item.


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Step Action

7. Click the Favorites menu.



Step Action

8. Notice that the report is now listed as a favorite. Click the GP for South list item.

Step Action

9. The GP for South report is displayed in the content area.


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Step Action

10. You successfully added a document to your favorites. End of Procedure.

Opening Planning Applications In Planning, all data is processed within applications. An application is a related set of dimensions and dimension members that meet analytical or reporting requirements; for example, an application named Testing for development and an application named Production for end users. In this topic, you open a Planning application. Procedure

Step Action

1. Begin by navigating to the PlanBud application. Click the Navigate button.



Step Action

2. Click the Applications menu.

Step Action

3. Click the Planning menu.


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Step Action

4. Click the PlanBud list item.

Step Action

5. Use the Enter Data - Standard Expenses page to enter, view, and modify data. By default, Planning displays the data form or module that was opened in your previous session.



Step Action

6. You successfully opened a Planning application. End of Procedure.

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