BI Apps - Financials - Cost Accounting / Supply chain - Inventory Analytics

Hello world,

Its been a while, but here I am again....I have been working on cost accounting with financials and supply chain inventory modules past month, and wanted to write a blog post explaining about the various metrics/customizations I have been implementing within this module.  This post will cover the functional as well as technical topics related to cost accounting in BI Apps. The topics I am going to cover in this post are as follows:

1) Introduction to cost accounting.
2) Out of the box model from BI Apps.
3) Customizations (RPD and ETL)

Introduction to Cost Accounting:

I want to start off introducing what cost accounting means and how reporting against costs is useful to the business.  Any manufacturing industry that makes products and sells to customers needs reporting on their products, costs and inventory. 

To be continued.....

OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 ( Bundle Patch - 1 ) Released

Rittman mead's blog article below lists all the new features introduced in OBIEE by oracle in the BP1 patch.  Here is the link to the article and highlights of the BP1.

Regarding the upgrades, if you are still on 10g, it is recommended that you install 11.1.1.6 and apply this patch for a stable environment.

Oracle BI Administrator / Oracle BI Server new features with OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1

• Improved Method to Achieve Nested Folders
• Ability to Control Presentation Layer Object Visibility
• Ability to Check for Modeling Problems that Affect Aggregate Persistence
• Improvements to the Aggregate Creation and Deletion Process
• Using XML Files to Automate Physical to Logical Mapping for ADF Data Sources

Oracle BI Presentation Server new features with OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1

• Trellis Charts, Microcharts, Sparklines and Line formats for MapViewer views
• Scorecard improvements (reordering of objects in the initiatives pane and strategy panel)
• Ability to create smart watch lists
• Support for write-back of manually entered targets for KPIs into Essbase

Installation new features with OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1

• Installation of BI Composer using a script, rather than manual configuration of JEE libraries etc

Oracle BI Mobile new features with OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1

• New homepage with coverflow-style display of dashboards, as well as recent and favourite objects
• IOS-native controls
• Catalog navigation
• Support for IOS multi-tasking, with the app retaining the state when you switch out of it
• Ability to launch the app via a URL pointing to a particular catalog object
• Graph interactivity, support for the new trellis view, search and interactive scorecards
• Print analyses and other catalog objects via wireless printing
• Offline storage of content with the ability to refresh on-demand

Until Next Time ... :)

Moving Report Links in the Dashboard

So, if you wanted to move the reports link to a custom position in the dashboard, you can achieve that by placing the following code in a narrative view where ever needed.  Below is the code:



<style>.ResultlinksCell { background-color: Red; border-top: white; border-left: Black;
position:relative;
top:-150px;
left:-350px;
}</style>

Until Next Time... :)

How to deliver an agent on first day of the month?

Create a request.

Select (*) from TABLE where (select next_day(trunc(sysdate,'month'),'mon') from dual) = sysdate

This will return null except for when its first day of the month.

Set an ibot as as condition of this, to only run when the report shows data.


Until Next Time... :)

OBIEE 11g: Impersonation

Impersonation is probably the best way to troubleshoot production issues.  Below are the things that needs to be done in order for an Aministrator to be able to impersonate as any user from the system:

1) Application policies for BI Administrator role needs to be modified around to add two new permissions:
 a) oracle.bi.server.impersonateUser 
 b) oracle.bi.server.queryUserPopulation


 

 2) The privileges under manage privileges in Administration menu should be given to BIAdministrator/Presentation Server Administrator role.







After making the above changes, the syntax for the URL is:


https://localhost:7001/analytics/saw.dll?Logon&NQUser=AdministratorUsername&NQPassword=AdministratorPassword&Impersonate=Usernameofthepersonthatyouaretryingtoimpersonate


Until Next Post.. :)

How to Display total number of pages / Page number in OBIEE?

If you are trying to display total number of pages in a report, Add the below formula in the column of the report and hide that column in the report.

FX = sum(count(1))/25

You can then reference the column in the narrative view like this: "Total pages in the report are @5" and out put may be "Total Pages in the report are 30".

Or

You can also use something like the below:

To calculate them use fi:
CEILING(CAST(RCOUNT("FactColumn In the Report (Sum All)") as DOUBLE)/ 25) for the page number
CEILING(CAST(COUNT("FactColumn In the Report (Sum All)") as DOUBLE)/ 25) for the total pages

Put the above formula in the column and reference it in the narrative view like I mentioned in the previous example.

Until Next Post... :)

exprformulautils.cpp Error After Upgrading from OBIEE 11.1.1.3.0 to OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0

Have you upgraded from 11.1.1.3.0 to 11.1.1.5.0 ? If yes, there is a know bug out there and a patch is also readily available in oracle support. This should fix your .cpp error after upgrading.

11G; ASSERTION; BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE; FAILURE; INTELLIGENCE; OBIEE; UPGRADE FROM 11.1.1.3.0; UPGRADE TO 11.1.1.5.0

Also, please refer to the following doc in oracle support :NOTE:1328704.1 - OBIEE 11g: Error: "Error Codes: OAMP2OPY:ACIOA5LN Assertion failure: isXsiTypeSqlExpression(rExpr) at line 67 of /scratch/.../webreport/exprformulautils.cpp" When Running Reports

Until Next Post... :)