Oracle® Smart View for Office

New Features

Release 11.1.2.5.200

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Updated: August 2014

Authors: EPM Information Development Team

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Table of Contents:

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.200

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.000

Features Introduced in Earlier Releases

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.200

Subtopics

- Views Created in Smart View Can Be Edited in Smart View

- Support for Multiple Oracle BI EE Private Connections

- Enhanced Drag and Drop in View Designer

- New “ Apply to All Sheets ” Option

- “ Improve Metadata Storage ” Option Default Setting

- New Alias Table Display Option in Member Selection

- Native Excel Formatting Can Be Saved in Planning

- Planning Spreading Enhancement

- New “ Repeat Member Labels ” Option for Forms

- Improved Column Indentation in Planning

- Smart View Name Change

Views Created in Smart View Can Be Edited in Smart View

You can now use the View Designer to edit Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition views that were created in Oracle Smart View for Office. In previous releases, Oracle BI EE views created in Smart View had to be edited in Oracle Business Intelligence Answers.

This feature requires the Oracle BI EE version 11.1.1.7.140527 patch, which supports editing views in Smart View (see the My Oracle Support site for information on Oracle BI EE patches).

Note:

To edit a view created in the View Designer in Smart View, use the View Designer. You may also edit the view in BI Answers, but once you have done so, you must perform any further editing in BI Answers.

To edit views created in BI Answers, you must use BI Answers.

See “ Editing Views Created in View Designer ” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for more information.

Support for Multiple Oracle BI EE Private Connections

Smart View now supports multiple Oracle BI EE private connections on one Office worksheet, slide, or document.

For example, in one worksheet, you may insert two graphs from two different Oracle Business Intelligence catalogs and refresh the sheet. Each graph will be updated with the latest data from the two different servers.

When connected to multiple Oracle BI EE servers:

- Users can switch between those connections in the Smart View Panel and browse the respective catalogs

- Users can insert views from the different connections into the same Office document

- If View Designer is launched from the Smart View Ribbon and no Oracle BI EE view is selected, then View Designer will be connected to the Oracle BI EE server that was last used

- If Paste is invoked from the Smart View Ribbon to paste content from Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, the paste action will use the Oracle BI EE connection that was last used

- When refreshing a document containing views from different connections, the views will be refreshed against the servers from which they were inserted

This feature requires the Oracle BI EE version 11.1.1.7.1 patch that supports multiple connections in Smart View (see the My Oracle Support site for information on Oracle BI EE patches).

If connecting to earlier versions of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, then only one connection is allowed.

This feature is described in “ Connecting to Multiple Oracle BI EE Data Sources ” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide .

Enhanced Drag and Drop in View Designer

Along with ability to drag and drop columns between edges, you can now use drag and drop to reposition columns within an edge in the View Designer.

New “ Apply to All Sheets ” Option

Using the new Apply to All Sheets option, changes made to sheet level options apply to all existing worksheets that have Smart View content and to new worksheets within the current workbook. If an existing worksheet has no Smart View content, then no changes will be applied to the options for that sheet. The changes do not apply to other existing workbooks or to new workbooks.

The sheet level options are Member Options, Data Options, and Formatting.

For example, assume you made changes to member options and selected Apply To All Sheets . The changes are propagated to all existing worksheets and all new worksheets in the current workbook. This allows for quick updating of sheet level options in the current workbook. However, these changes are not propagated to any existing workbooks or new workbooks.

Note:

The Apply To All Sheets option is not available in PowerPoint or Word. The changes you make in Excel do not affect PowerPoint or Word.

In the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide , see “ Global Options and Sheet Level Options ” for more information.

“ Improve Metadata Storage ” Option Default Setting

The Improve Metadata Storage option is now selected by default the first time you start Smart View 11.1.2.5.200. This option pertains to interoperability between different versions of Smart View.

You may manually clear this option. However, note that when this option is cleared, Smart View maintains two copies of metadata for compatibility purposes, which may result in slower overall performance.

New Alias Table Display Option in Member Selection

For Oracle Essbase and Oracle Hyperion Planning connections, a new Alias Table option lets you apply an alias table to the members displayed in the Member Selection dialog box. To do this, click the Options button in the Member Selection dialog box and select Alias Table , and then select an alias table. Note that the alias table selection made in the Member Selection dialog box applies only to the dialog box display and not to the grid in the Office document.

This feature requires Oracle Essbase 11.1.2.3.500 or later, and Planning 11.1.2.3.500 or later.

Native Excel Formatting Can Be Saved in Planning

Smart View now provides a way for users to save native Excel formatting back to the Planning server as part of a form or ad-hoc grid. The saved formatting is applied in both the Planning browser interface and within Excel when the form is rendered. This functionality is in addition to the existing Smart View cell styles functionality.

In the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide , see “ Saving Native Excel Formatting in Planning, ” “ Saving Ad Hoc Grids as Forms, ”, and “ Cell Styles ” for more information about this feature.

This feature requires Planning 11.1.2.3.500 or later.

Planning Spreading Enhancement

When Smart View is used with Planning release 11.1.2.3.500 or later, more than one type of spreading is supported on the same row or column dimension. For example, FY2013 can have formula fill, and FY2014 can have flow.

This feature requires Planning 11.1.2.3.500 or later.

New “ Repeat Member Labels ” Option for Forms

A new formatting option, Repeat Member Labels , is introduced for Planning and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management forms. This option facilitates the readability of forms by allowing member names to appear on each row of data.

In forms where repeated members are merged into one cell, member names may be out of the screen view, necessitating much back and forth scrolling between the member names and the row data. By selecting Repeat Member Labels in the Formatting tab of the Options dialog box, forms are easier to read and use.

Improved Column Indentation in Planning

This release provides a smarter display of members when nonconsecutive levels of a hierarchy are used. For example, in prior releases, in a dimension of five levels where the first, third, and fifth levels of a hierarchy are used, the indentation of these levels would be at the first, third, and fifth indentation level, even though the second and fourth levels were not used. With this feature, the first, third, and fifth levels are displayed at the first, second, and third indentations levels, thus improving the readability and usability of the form.

This feature requires Oracle Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.3.500 or later.

Smart View Name Change

The full Smart View product name is now Oracle Smart View. “ Hyperion ” has been dropped from the name.

The shortened name is still Smart View.

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.000

Subtopics

- Simplified Installer

- Modifying Connections from Document Contents

- Ability to Hide Document Contents Pane

- Refresh Not Required Before Submitting Data on Forms

- Change to Display of Duplicate Variable Names

- New VBA Functions: HypHideRibbonMenu and HypHideRibbonMenuReset

- Expanded Platform Support

- Tablet Support

Simplified Installer

The Smart View installer is improved for ease of use, streamlining the install and upgrade process. Among the improvements are:

- A single installer for 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Microsoft Office

- Automatic display of the installer in the language set in the Format field of the Windows Region and Language dialog box

- Seamless upgrades with no need to uninstall or delete files

Additionally, this release lays the groundwork for internet-based installations.

Instructions for using the installer are in the Oracle Smart View for Office Readme .

Modifying Connections from Document Contents

From the Document Contents pane, you can now change connections in a Smart View document. This is useful when sharing an Office document between departments that point to different servers or when moving from a test to a production environment.

You can change the connection properties for all entities in a document that share the same connection information (for example, all worksheets or grids that point to the sample application and database on a particular server). Or you can change the connection information sheet by sheet.

From the Document Contents pane, select the Modify Connections command from either the bottom of the pane or the right-click menu. See “ Modifying Connections ” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for instructions.

Ability to Hide Document Contents Pane

The Document Contents pane can now be completely hidden when another pane is displayed in the Smart View Panel. When you click the down arrow in the Home button in the Smart View Panel and select another pane, such as the Shared Connections pane or Private Connections pane, the Document Contents pane is no longer displayed at the bottom of the Smart View Panel, even in a minimized format.

You can still minimize and resize the Document Contents pane, as in previous releases.

Refresh Not Required Before Submitting Data on Forms

You are no longer required to refresh the contents of a form before submitting data after a POV change.

Note that when you are working in a form and you click Submit Data, you are actually writing data back to the latest POV selected in the POV toolbar. Oracle recommends performing a Refresh whenever you make changes to the POV. The refresh updates the data on the sheet to reflect the latest POV change.

Change to Display of Duplicate Variable Names

With this release, Smart View added functionality to display fully qualified variable names when variable names are duplicated. This helps to identify variables defined at the global, application, and database levels.

New VBA Functions: HypHideRibbonMenu and HypHideRibbonMenuReset

Two new VBA functions are introduced in this release: HypHideRibbonMenu() and HypHideRibbonMenuReset().

- HypHideRibbonMenu hides the ribbon menu item passed into the function.

- HypHideRibbonMenuReset resets visibility of the menu items hidden on the sheet using HypHideRibbonMenu.

These functions are supported for Office 2007 and above.

For more information, see “ HypHideRibbonMenu ” and “ HypHideRibbonMenuReset ” in the Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office Developer's Guide .

Expanded Platform Support

Starting with this release, Smart View is supported on the following platforms:

- Microsoft Windows 8

- Microsoft Office 2013 (32- and 64-bit)

Tablet Support

Smart View is now supported on Microsoft Surface Pro tablets.

Download and run the Smart View installation program, as described in the Oracle Smart View for Office Readme . Once installed, the same functionality of Oracle Smart View for Office on a PC will be available to you on the Surface Pro.

Features Introduced in Earlier Releases

If you are upgrading from Release 11.1.2.0, 11.1.2.1, 11.1.2.2, 11.1.2.2.300, 11.1.2.2.310, or 11.1.2.3 use the Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO) tool to review the list of new features added between those releases. The CFO tool enables you to identify your current products, your current release version, and your target implementation release version. It also enables you to quickly produce a customized set of high-level descriptions of the product features developed between your current release and your target release, enabling you to get an overview of the functionality available. The CFO tool is available at https://support.oracle.com/oip/faces/secure/km/DocumentDisplay.jspx?id=1092114.1

Oracle Smart View for Office - New Features

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