Oracle^® Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide > Administering Oracle BI Dashboards >

Creating Dashboards Action Links

To provide a link for end users to navigate from their dashboards to a record in a Siebel operational application, use an action link. Oracle Business Intelligence applications contain prebuilt action links in requests and dashboards. For example, a user can drill down directly from an Oracle Sales Analytics dashboard to a specific record in an Oracle's Siebel Sales view. Drilldown is based on the row identifier column contained in a request.

NOTE:  End users must have the appropriate permissions and responsibilities to access the view, and any drilldown links. Also, the host name for the Web server (or Virtual IP) serving content from the Siebel application server must match that for Oracle BI Presentation Services, because the JavaScript Security model prevents a script on one server from affecting another.

When running the Oracle Business Intelligence infrastructure, there is no connection to a Siebel operational application. Therefore, you cannot create a new action link nor access a predefined action link. The Action Links command in the Navigate drop-down menu is visible only when the user is logged into the integrated application.

If a request is added to a dashboard as a link and set to open in a new window, then action links contained in that request will no longer navigate to the Siebel operation application.

To create an action link

1. Identify the target Siebel operational application view.
2. Select the Siebel operational application view or applet that to drill down to, and select Help > About View.

   A pop-up window shows the names of the view and applet. Note the view and list applet names. You need these names in Step 7.

3. Using a Subject Area that is appropriate for the target applet, use Answers to create a new Oracle Business Intelligence request with the row identifier column in it, for example, Account_Row_ID.
4. Click the Properties button for the column.

   The Column Properties dialog appears.

5. Click the Column Format tab.
6. In the Value Interaction field, set the Type drop-down menu to Action Link.
7. Fill in the fields using the following table as a guide.

   Field Name	Description
   View	Enter the name of the view as determined in Step 2.
   Applet	Enter the name of the applet as determined in Step 2.
   Show Action Link Icon	Select this check box to include Action Link icons in the resulting report.
   Pass value from	Set this drop-down menu to the ROW_ID field in your query. In Step 4, if you had clicked the Column Properties button on the ROW_ID field, then choose This Column from the drop-down menu. If you had clicked the Column Properties button on a different field, then choose ROW_ID instead.

8. Click OK, and then view the request on the dashboard.

After the request is saved and placed on a dashboard, the row identifier column contains an action link to the Siebel operational application.