Examining the ongoing challenges of delivering high-quality, value-added ERP services in Higher Education.


Sunday, August 19, 2012

Spinning Wheel of Death

What fun we had last week trouble-shooting predictably unpredictable failures on our OBIEE development environment. It all began with Noetix, a set of pre-packaged content for Oracle E-Business Suite Financials that we acquired to jump-start our transition to modern BI tools. (But it was not really Noetix' fault, as you'll see).

There were some new roles (as expected) and an RPD to merge (no biggie) and some catalog content, too (par for the course in multi-user development). All things we will face again and again in our future as multiple development teams author content for thousands of users.

For roughly 38 minutes after the install was done, everything looked great. And then we saw the following behaviors:
  • Perpetual spinning icon when trying to open the Dashboards Menu
  • No response (not even a browser error) when selecting New > Dashboard
  • Permissions error when opening ANY Dashboard object (not only new merged content)
Throughout this time I could create ad hoc analyses, run saved analyses from the catalog (both pre-existing and new Noetix content), etc.

Attempting to open any Dashboard prompted this error:
This message-- seemingly a failure related to one of the roles created during our Noetix installation process -- cried out for corruption somewhere... We started by scouring the permissions on Dashboards features: everything was fine. Checked the policy store in Weblogic / Enterprise Manager: looked fine. Checked the permission on catalog content; tweaked the settings -- problem solved! For 38-41 minutes, upon which I saw this, again:
We reverted to our RPD: no luck. Reverted to old RPD: spinning, spinning, spinning. Restarted services. Bounced servers. Cleared caches. Any "fix" we thought we found lasted 40 minutes.

Finally, we found relevant articles on My Oracle Support:
  • Oracle Support Document 1390497.1 (How To Clean Corrupted Permissions On An Upgraded OBIEE 11g Presentation Server Catalog) 
  • Oracle Support Document 1388837.1 (OBIEE 11g: Clicking on "Manage Privileges" Throws
  • "Error retrieving user/group data from Oracle BI Server's User Population API")
Unfortunately, our first attempt at this catalog clean up failed. Third or fourth try worked like a charm (changing from "Report" to "Clean" mode also critical). The Oracle OBIEE 11.1.1.6 documentation actually describes the process rather clearly, but we had never thought to look there!

Problem solved; onward to new problems next week!

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 2:44 PM Add a comment!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Dynamic Metric Selection from Prompt

There is a saying: "never use two words when one can suffice." Sometimes it seems that with Oracle BI (OBIEE) they have a different view: why provide one way to do something when six can suffice. At the minimum you have to deal with the semi-redundant functionality of the BI Publisher and Legacy Siebel feature sets. But even within those tools there is often more than one way to implement a given feature.

Imagine that you have this requirement: provide the end user an option for which metric to include in a table or graph. A common use case would be to toggle between order volume (# of transactions) and revenue ($).

The most obvious way to do this within Oracle BI is to use the "Column Selector" view. This is easy and fairly obvious.

1. Create your analysis with one metric.
2. From the Results Tab, insert a new view -- Column Selector.
3. Click the checkbox next to the metric you already chose, then double click other metrics from the subject area navigator to add them to the list.
4. View the report and note the drop-down for the user to choose the metric he prefers. (Below is a screenshot with two views on one dashboard).

But that does not seem to be Oracle's preferred method... Presuming that your plan is to deploy Analyses mostly via Dashboards, the recommendation seems to be to configure Dashboard Prompts and utilize Presentation Variables. This is pretty slick, especially in combination with the "go-less prompt" style of removing the Apply button. It isn't straight-forward and it does have some drawbacks, but it is a useful method to know!

1. Configure your analysis with the dimension columns and a single measure.
2. Edit the formula for the measure, entering syntax that presumes a presentation variable "{Met01}" but defaults to something (here: revenue)
Resulting column shown below...
3. Create a Dashboard Prompt.
4. Add a prompt for "Metric" -- the trick here is to replace the member formula with a fake text value -- '1' or something like that (see below)
5. The next trick is to bypass the normal way of adding members to the prompt -- since we are not using a real prompt, we need to trick the system; click the pencil icon in the upper right of the screen.
6. (Above) Key in member names from the fact table(s) of the subject area for this report. This has to be perfect -- I find it easiest to have two tabs of the same OBIEE instance open in Firefox and toggle between them.

7. Establish a default (although your query will default if you followed the above example) and define the presentation variable to be set as a result of the user selecting a value; name it "Met01" since that's what you assumed earlier!
8. Create a new Dashboard and drag the prompt and report into the body.
9. Run the report; select each radio button to see the view(s) refresh.
(And below, after toggling the prompt value...)

So that's pretty slick, and definitely the way to go if you will embed multiple analyses on a single Dashboard. My top concern -- although I would not be surprised to learn there is a fix for this -- is that the column selector has the added advantage of also toggling the column heading, whereas in the prompt/pres-var solution the column heading is something generic such as "selected metric." Nevertheless, I think I'll be teaching this trick to my team next week!

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 9:17 AM Add a comment!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Nifty Trick for Dimension Tool Tips


Not all users will remember the meaning of each dimension or even the values within that dimension. I found this simple (and not at all obvious or intuitive) trick buried deep within the OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 Sample App, on Dashboard 3.21 (Other Tips). In a nutshell, the trick is to use the Data Format field on an Analysis column to embed a "tooltip" to enlighten the end user during mouse-over. What's even better is that it is also possible to quickly apply the Tool Tip universally to the column if you so desire!

This is quickie... Don't blink or you'll miss it.

1. On the Criteria tab of a new or existing analysis, invoke the menu for a column and choose "Column Properties"

2. On the "Data Format" tab of the Column Properties modal window, check the "Override Default Data Format" box and choose "Custom Text Format" in the drop-down for "Treat Text As" and enter HTML as shown below. In this text, the @ will be replaced at run-time with the name of the member (even though the same tip will appear for every member of the dimension).

3. To apply this universally to the column, click "Save as Default" at the bottom of the window and select the second option.

4. The completed configuration is shown below with some incredibly pithy text.

My one additional observation here is that as I dig into OBIEE I keep realizing the endlessness of the configuration options. One problem is knowing where to draw the line. Another problem is the lack of clear documentation on the variables that can be used within the HTML embedded in all these properties! I feel as if an entire style guide needs to be written! (And unfortunately, I'm not the guy to do it...)

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 8:12 AM Add a comment!

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Nifty Trick for Emphasizing OBIEE Actions

I'm a big fan of the Action Framework in Oracle BI (OBIEE) 11g. This feature allows a report designer significant flexibility for "actionable intelligence" (another of Oracle's names for this feature along with Agents, in fact) including guided navigation from a cell on a report to relevant content. With a broad set of options, including: navigation to websites, invoking a web service, calling a Java method or intiating JavaScript, posting to an HTTP form. The Action Framework also is the primary mechanism for integrating one Analysis (Answers) query to another and opening relevant reports or forms in Oracle Hyperion EPM, Oracle E-Business Suite, or Siebel CRM. So it has a lot going for it, right? Did I mention that it is one of the more straight-forward configuration items in OBIEE?
Caption: "New Action" pop-up from the 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 Sample App; note that in this environment the options for EPM and Siebel have not been configured.

Once an action has been configured, there are basically four ways it can be invoked:
  1. Directly from the Web Catalog UI
  2. Directly from a Dashboard
  3. Within the context of a scheduled Agent
  4. From an "Action Links" menu embedded in an Analysis

The last of these is probably the most valuable, especially since it allows for the passing of relevant context from the cell the user picked.
In the above screenshot, for example, the term "Baseline Operations" will automatically be sent as a search criterion to our Confluence knowledge base if the user clicks "Search FSS Confluence for Definition" (a "Navigate to a Web Page" action) or the quarter and category will be passed to another BI Analysis report if the user clicks "Analyze Category in Detail." This works great... With one minor problem: there is NO indication to the user that navigation is possible from that cell. In many other cases, the default action would be a drill into details. This has the potential to confuse users.

And then I came across this nifty little trick when perusing the catalog in the latest OBIEE Sample App. See below:
The additional column "Actions" is used only for the purposes of exposing the Action Links menu. How do do it? Simple.

1. Create an analysis with dimensions and measures
2. Add ANY additional dimension to the end of the layout. It doesn't matter which one you choose; it won't get used.
3. Open the menu on the extraneous column and choose "Edit Formula"
4. Click the "Custom Headings" checkbox and overwrite the Folder and Column Heading with the text for the column in the report.
5. (Above) In the "Column Formula" field replace the contents with the hyperlink text (with single quotes around the text).


6. Configure the Action menu by opening the menu on the "Action" column and choosing "Column Properties."

7. On the "Interaction" tab choose "Action Links" as the "Primary Interaction."

8. Configure the links, either from a library of pre-configured Actions or by defining new ones.

9. Run the report and see your links in action!
Pretty slick little trick, if you ask me! I'm not saying you should use it every time, and I know it is a little busy, but a useful trick to have up your sleeve, especially if a client asks for something like this!

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 7:56 AM Add a comment!

Monday, July 30, 2012

The New OBIEE Sample App

I love these sample application images for Oracle Business Intelligence. Although the cynical side of me sees Oracle’s every move as a sales tactic, I don’t think the typical individual running VirtualBox and experimenting with Oracle R Enterprise integration with OBIEE makes purchasing decisions… So I am going to choose to look at these images as awesome showcases for features and capabilities – it must be a fun job to configure these samples!

The new one for OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 was released last week to the Oracle Technology Network and I just started monkeying around with it. Just take a look at this screenshot from the "What’s New" document:

Before talking about all that red text – the added features since the last image – just consider how much content is here: an illustration, complete with textual guidance, for every use case a BI developer could possibly think of (within reason). And plenty of examples some of us never would have imagined.

There is a lot here – I would literally need two weeks off to decipher and understand every bell and whistle. (To think I was proud of myself for modeling Essbase into the RPD last week!) But I am glad to have the option to try... The advanced visualizations are far from what my organization is ready for; I can’t let some people around here see these or they might get scared off! In some ways, these displays of might stand in contrast to Oracle BI’s selling points of simplicity and ease.

But I’m definitely going to have to try and replicate the JavaScript WordCloud visualization! That is just too damn cool...

The VirtualBox Image can be downloaded here.

(Just make sure you have a solid connection and plenty of hard drive space; the files are very large...)

Will be back soon with some more specific illustrations; I have a treasure trove of OBIEE content to publish but have not been on my blog game!

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 10:00 AM Add a comment!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Pitch Anything in 15 Seconds...

The other morning I was carrying on as usual, reading Twitter on my iPhone while walking down the street and trying not to run into any street signs (I'm an early riser, so no real risk of encountering other humans on the sidewalk at that hour...) A headline caught my eye: "How to Pitch Anything in 15 Seconds" -- here is the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/17/how-to-pitch-anything-in-15-seconds/ and below is the YouTube video.



As I said on my own Twitter feed, this short video (4:35) was exactly what the doctor ordered. Although I have surely read about something similar before, I was struck by the simplicity of Carmine Gallo's "message map" approach.

The most pressing "sales" challenge in my day job is business intelligence, and more specifically a project to replace our aging reporting platform with Oracle BI. My struggle has been to explain the program quickly to various stakeholders from across my organization in a way that excites them rather than glazes their eyes. In part, this is the problem of IT people trying do marketing... and it also reflects a disconnect between priorities; the reasons end users want a modern platform may not be the same as the reasons IT wants it.

Within about an hour of watching the video, I drafted a new slide. I thought it was pretty good. Certainly better than any other one-pager we have assembled. The tool's call for brevity -- <140 characters for the tagline, 3 reinforcing points, 3-5 sub-reinforcements -- is wise, but tricky. At first I thought about the old writers' joke "why use one word when X can do?" But that can get dangerous if it leads you to using consulting words and jargon: synergy, robust, ad hoc, real-time, integrated, seamless. Not that there is anything wrong with those words... But they are hollow.

I have a lot more work to do before this message map is ready for prime time... Nevertheless, I'll share the first draft:

Tagline: "[BI Program Name] will simplify and expand your capability to answer important questions"
  • Self-Service for Everyone
  • Adapting with the Business
  • Robust, But Friendly

Like I said, it needs another round or two (or ten) of revisions. But what do you think?

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posted by JasonShaffner @ 3:26 PM Add a comment!