About using Oracle Portal as a personalization framework for Discoverer

All authenticated/logged in users will be able to customize particular properties of each Discoverer portlet you create. For example, they will be able to change the portlet title and other portlet options and set formatting customizations for a Discoverer Worksheet portlet. You may also allow them to customize additional properties of the portlet such as the database connection used, parameter values, or the list of worksheets.

You can also allow users to analyze the worksheet that is used as the basis for a Discoverer Worksheet or Gauges portlet in the Single Worksheet Viewer. The Single Worksheet Viewer is a special instance of the Discoverer Viewer that is available only through a Discoverer portlet. When a user opens a worksheet from a Discoverer List of Worksheets portlet they also use the Single Worksheet Viewer. The Single Worksheet Viewer will not allow users to change the worksheet they have opened and will not allow them to change the connection used. It is specifically designed to restrict the user to access to one worksheet from a Discoverer portlet.

Note that when an authenticated user launches the Single Worksheet Viewer (whether from an Analyze link in a Worksheet or Gauges portlet or opening a worksheet from a Discoverer List of Worksheets portlet) the SSO username is passed through to the query being executed to return data to Single Worksheet Viewer. In this way, if data differs by Single Sign-On user, the user will only see the data they are supposed to see.

Once in Single Worksheet Viewer, the user will have access to additional customizations and actions that are not available within the portlet customizations page. For example, in the Single Worksheet Viewer the user will be able to change layout by moving or swapping columns and change page item values to change the data displayed. In addition to extended customizations, Single Worksheet Viewer gives the user access to the following actions that are not available directly in the portlet:

• Rerun query

• Revert to original

• Print

• Export

• Send as email

The following table summarizes customizations and specifies whether they are available through the portlet customization page or through the Single Worksheet Viewer.

Table 21-1 Customizations in Discoverer Portlet Provider and Single Worksheet Viewer

Customization	Customize Portlet	Analyze Worksheet
Database Connection	Yes	No
Parameter Values	Yes	Yes
Change Page Item Values	No	Yes
Layout	No	Yes
Stoplight Formats	Yes	Yes
Cell Formats	Yes	Yes
Sort (Relational and tabular worksheets only)	No	Yes
Saved Selections (OLAP worksheets only)	No	Yes
Link/Unlink Graph (OLAP worksheets only)	No	Yes
Graph Type	Yes	Yes
Portlet Options - Display Options	Yes	No
Portlet Options - Analyze Options	Yes	No
Portlet Options - Rows and Columns	Yes	No
Rows and Columns	No	Yes

Note: Rows and Columns are a separate setting in the portlet and in Single Worksheet Viewer, which do not affect each other.

You can further allow Discoverer users to save these customizations made in Single Worksheet Viewer for all three types of Discoverer portlet (i.e. Worksheet, Gauges and List of Worksheets). By doing this you can create a personalization framework and effectively support hundreds of users with a handful of worksheets. You can allow each Portal/SSO user to have their own personalized, custom view of the worksheets they are interested in without the overhead of creating and managing a database account for them or granting them privileges to create and save Discoverer workbooks to the database.

In all cases, whether modified in the customize portlet page or in the Single Worksheet Viewer, all customizations are stored on a per user, per portlet basis and are only viewable to that Oracle Portal user. The customizations will not impact or be visible to other users.