Bookshelf v10.1.3.2: Overview of Oracle BI 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 colors 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.

Many of the features in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards are self-explanatory, and definitions and how-to information appear on each page. When more information is available than will fit on the page, a Help button appears near the upper right corner. Click the button to see more detailed information.

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.

Table 24 provides definitions for common terms in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards.

Table 24. Definitions for Common Terms in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards
Term	Definition
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. For information about skins used in Oracle BI, see Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide.
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. For information about styles used in Oracle BI, see Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide.
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. For more information about the Presentation Catalog, see Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide.

For information about administering permissions for dashboards, see Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide. For information about default permissions and responsibilities for users of Oracle BI applications, see Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Guide.

NOTE: When you use an Oracle Siebel operational application, dashboard integration is done using Oracle's Siebel applications. For information, see Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Guide.

Overview of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards

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