3 Office Integration with BI Dashboard Feature

This new feature enables users to save reports in Powerpoint format, and paste reports directly into MS Office applications.

Two new Interactive Dashboard features have been added to this release that provide additional interactivity with Microsoft Office. These features complement the new Oracle BI Office Add-ins for PowerPoint and Excel that provide functionality natively within those Office applications. For more information on the Oracle BI Office Add-ins for PowerPoint and Excel, see Chapter 24, "Installing Oracle Business Intelligence for Microsoft Office"and Chapter 25, "Microsoft Office Support".

The first new Dashboard feature is "Download to PowerPoint", which adds PowerPoint alongside Excel as a targeted application for downloaded reports. This new link is found within the "Report Links" Download menu and will download a static version of that report to PowerPoint. Like the other Download options, when the link is first clicked, the user will have the choice of directly saving the report to disk or opening it immediately. The Oracle BI Office Add-in does not need to be installed to use this functionality.

The second new Dashboard feature provides a means to copy and paste Dashboard reports directly into Office applications. This functionality is also made available along with the other Dashboard Report Links configured using the Dashboard Editor. A new "Copy" link can be added to a report that will copy the XML definition of the current report to the Windows clipboard. Pasting this link using the Paste function found in the Oracle BI menu will convert the copied XML into an Office version of that report. Naturally this functionality will only be present in versions of either PowerPoint or Excel where the Oracle BI Office Add-in has been installed. Once pasted, this Dashboard report will then be translated into native Office objects that can be subsequently refreshed with live data at any point. Pasting the link directly using Edit/Paste either in Office or any other application (like a text editor) will copy the request XML without translation.

3.1 Configuration for the Office Integration with BI Dashboard Feature

This section explains how to configure Office Integration With BI Dashboard feature.

Access to both of these Dashboard Report Links can be administered using a new Access to Oracle BI Office Add-in privilege.