Oracle® Smart View for Office

New Features

Release 11.1.2.5.410

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Authors: EPM Information Development Team

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Table of Contents:

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.410

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.400

New Features Introduced in Earlier Releases

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.410

New Extension for Enterprise Performance Reporting

This release introduces the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service extension for Oracle Smart View for Office. With the Enterprise Performance Reporting extension, you use familiar Microsoft Office tools to access and work with data in Enterprise Performance Reporting.

Enterprise Performance Reporting in Smart View enables you and your colleagues work in a collaborative environment with Word documents containing refreshable data copied from Smart View. With its clearly defined assignments and tasks, the Enterprise Performance Reporting workflow organizes input from many contributors in one document. Some tasks are performed in the Enterprise Performance Reporting web interface, and others are completed in Smart View.

With Enterprise Performance Reporting:

- Use the web interface to assemble a set of documents, called doclets , into a structure called a report package .

- Assign user access and responsibilities, as well as timelines and due dates, in the web interface for the authoring, review, and approval of each doclet in the report package.

- Use Smart View to author doclet contents directly in Microsoft Word. You can work with doclets in Smart View while connected to Enterprise Performance Reporting, or you can download doclets and work with them locally.

- Leverage Smart View's ability to access various data sources and include individual data points or formatted reports within the doclet. You can retrieve data from Enterprise Performance Reporting data sources and other Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System on-premises and cloud data sources.

- Collaboratively review and comment on assigned review instances either on the web interface or in Smart View.

- Sign off on the entire report package either on the web interface or in Smart View.

- Finalize the report package in the web interface.

When you work with the doclets in an Enterprise Performance Reporting report package, you can use Smart View to copy and paste data from Enterprise Performance Reporting data sources, other Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System data sources, including on-premises and cloud data sources, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition data sources. For example, you can incorporate data from Oracle Essbase and Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service in the same doclet. A doclet in a report package in Word may contain a profit and loss statement that was created from an Essbase source along with an income statement report created from a Oracle Hyperion Planning source. The data points for the areas that you copy are retained in Word, so you can refresh the doclet to keep the data up to date.

See the Enterprise Performance Reporting documentation on the Oracle Help Center for complete descriptions of Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service, including overviews, and installation and procedural information.

Features Introduced in Release 11.1.2.5.400

Subtopics

- Enhanced Submit Data Functionality

- POV and Pivot Enhancements

- Improved Extension Update and Distribution

- New Diagnostics Tools

- New Member Selection Dialog Box for Business Rules

- User Name and Password Support for Drill-Through Reports

- Oracle BI EE Filter Enhancement

- Oracle BI EE Prompt Enhancement

- Measure Label Flexibility in Oracle BI EE View Designer

- Sheet Information Improvements

Enhanced Submit Data Functionality

Smart View offers two new options for submitting data:

- Submit Data Without Refresh —Submit modified cells, also called dirty cells, from Essbase, Planning Ad Hoc, and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management Ad Hoc without first refreshing. This functionality was previously only available for Essbase.

- Submit Data Range —Select and then submit contiguous and non-contiguous single cells and cell ranges from Essbase, Planning Ad Hoc, and Financial Management Ad Hoc. Only cell data from the selected cells is submitted. If there are dirty cells on the sheet outside the range of selected cells, their changed value is not submitted.

Note that you can use the Submit Data Without Refresh and Submit Data Range options to submit cell data from cells that were modified by a user who does not have Smart View installed.

In the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide , see “ Using the Submit Data Options ” for more information.

POV and Pivot Enhancements

When connected to Essbase and Oracle Hyperion Provider Services 11.1.2.4 or later, the POV toolbar and pivoting behavior is enhanced as follows:

- Multiple members can now be pivoted from the grid to the POV toolbar.

- Multiple members can now be pivoted from the POV toolbar to the grid.

- A single dimension can now remain on the POV toolbar.

In prior releases, only one member in a dimension could be pivoted from the grid to the POV, and from the POV to the grid. Also in prior releases, Essbase only supported having at least two dimension on the POV toolbar.

Improved Extension Update and Distribution

In release 11.1.2.5.400 and later, you can customize the extension update process so that Smart View end users can control when they install, update and remove extensions. To enable this functionality, the Smart View administrator configures attributes in the UpdateList.xml manifest file to control the options available to the users. If the administrator does not configure these attributes in UpdateList.xml , extensions will continue to be updated using the existing Auto-Update process.

In releases earlier than Smart View 11.1.2.5.400, extensions were updated using the Auto- Update process. To update extensions with Auto-Update, Smart View end users go to the Extensions tab of the Options dialog box and click the Check for updates link or select the Check for updates when Microsoft Office starts check box to initiate extension updates. For all extensions, if any updates were available, they were retrieved and installations were automatically initiated.

There are two types of extensions that can be installed on a Smart View client machine:

- Provider extensions . Extensions that are dependent on, or integrated with, Oracle components are provider extensions. Examples are the Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting extensions. Provider extensions can be configured as required extensions.

- Per-user extensions . Extensions that are installed in the user’s application data folder. These extensions may or may not be dependent on Oracle components. Additionally, per-user extensions can also be configured as required extensions.

The Smart View administrator configures the UpdateList.xml file to specify the list of provider and per-user extensions available to end users along with options for installing, updating, and removing them. Additionally, per-user extensions can also be configured to display an indicator for required extensions and does not force the installation. The Smart View end user then accesses the Options dialog box and installs, updates, or uninstalls the extensions that are available to him or her in the Extensions tab.

To configure provider and per-user extension installation, uninstallation, and updating, complete the procedure “Configuring Manual Extension Updates” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide .

If you do not want to make changes to the extension update process, you may refer to “Configuring Auto-Update Extensions” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for information on the structure of the XML and examples, but you do not need to take any further action.

For instructions on installing, updating, and removing extensions in Smart View, end users can refer to the procedure topics in “ Extensions ” in the “ Smart View Options ” chapter of the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide .

New Diagnostics Tools

When an issue arises while using Smart View that you cannot resolve on your own, you can use the new Smart View Diagnostic tools in the Diagnostics group in the Smart View ribbon to create and collect log files and screenshots to send to Oracle Support. When you are finished collecting diagnostic data, you use the diagnostic tools to zip up the files. Then you transmit the ZIP file to Oracle Support for analysis. The log files and screenshots are used by Oracle Support to troubleshoot and resolve your issue.

You can customize certain features of Smart View Diagnostic tools; for example:

- Hide data values in an Office document.

- Hide member names in an Office document.

- Direct the diagnostics output files to a folder other than the default.

- Allow automatic screenshots for each warning or error message that is displayed.

See the “ Smart View Diagnostics ” chapter of the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for more information on the Diagnostics tools.

New Member Selection Dialog Box for Business Rules

The Member Selection dialog box for Oracle Hyperion Business Rules and for modifying user variables on forms is changed in this release, and is now the same as the standard Smart View Member Selection dialog box accessed from the data provider ribbons. With this new dialog box, performance is improved when selecting members for Business Rules or modifying user variables, providing a consistent user experience across the product.

In prior releases, the Member Selection dialog box for Oracle Hyperion Business Rules had a different look-and-feel from the standard Member Selection dialog box, even though the fields and controls were generally the same.

This feature requires Planning 11.1.2.4 or later.

User Name and Password Support for Drill-Through Reports

An Essbase administrator can require that users specify a user name and a password when logging on to the data source to access drill-through reports. When launching a drill-through report in Smart View, the user name and password fields are now displayed if they are required to access the drill-through report. If a user name and password are not required, then these fields are not displayed.

Oracle BI EE Filter Enhancement

When defining the filter expression for views in View Designer, sometimes the data to choose from in the Value Selector is exceedingly long. To accommodate loading large amounts of data in the Value Selector , Smart View presents values in groups. In the Value Selector , you can scroll and make selections from the first group shown, then click More to view and make selections from the next group. You can continue clicking More until you have viewed and made selections from the entire data list.

Oracle BI EE Prompt Enhancement

Prompts enable users to specify criteria that determines the content of the view that they are inserting. When editing prompts, depending on how the prompt was set up, you may be selecting data directly from a drop-down list on the Prompt Selector . You may also be picking values from the Value Selector dialog box. Sometimes the data to choose from in the Value Selector is exceedingly long. To accommodate loading large amounts of data in the Value Selector , Oracle Smart View for Office presents values in groups. In the Value Selector , you can scroll and make selections from the first group shown, then click More to view and make selections from the next group. You can continue clicking More until you have viewed and made selections from the entire data list.

Measure Label Flexibility in Oracle BI EE View Designer

The Measure Label element represents the labels for all the Measures columns in the Measures edge of the View Designer. If you are working with a pivot table view that has the pivot table display style, you can now reorder the Measure Label element within the Column edge, and you can now move the Measure Label to any edge except the Measure edge. Oracle recommends experimenting with moving the Measure Label element to another edge, or reordering it within the Column edge, to create a more readable pivot table layout.

Sheet Information Improvements

The Sheet Information dialog box in Excel now presents consistent information across Oracle Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning, and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management providers, including connection status and other information. See “ Sheet Information ” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for more details.

New Features Introduced in Earlier Releases

Use the Cumulative Feature Overview tool to create reports of new features added in prior releases. This tool enables you to identify your current products, your current release version, and your target implementation release version. With a single click, the tool quickly produces a customized set of high-level descriptions of the product features developed between your current and target releases. This tool is available here:

https://support.oracle.com/oip/faces/secure/km/DocumentDisplay.jspx?id=1092114.1

Oracle Smart View for Office - New Features

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