About Extension Installations and Updates

The extension installation and update process described in this chapter enables Oracle Smart View for Office end users to install, update, or uninstall extensions based on parameters set by the Smart View administrator in the manifest file, UpdateList.xml.

Auto-Update versus Manual Update

Types of Extensions

About the Oracle Journals for Financial Management and Oracle BI EE Extensions

Auto-Update versus Manual Update

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 could 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.

In release 11.1.2.5.400 and later, the Smart View can customize the extension update process so that end users can control when they install, update, and remove extensions. The 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. For more information, see Configuring Auto-Update Extensions.

If you're using Auto-Update, Oracle recommends that you remove unused connection URLs using Delete Connection URLs, described in Deleting Connection URLs in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide. In the Delete Connection URLs dialog, select Extension Updates URLs from the drop-down list, and remove the URLs that are no longer used. It is important to remove URLs that are no longer used because auto-update connects to each server to check for updates. A login dialog for each server appears for the user to authenticate. However, if a server is no longer being used and a connection cannot be established, users will see a connection error.

Types of Extensions

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 Strategic Modeling and Predictive Planning. 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 in Configuring Manual Extension Updates.

If you do not want to make changes to the extension update process, you may refer to Configuring Auto-Update Extensions 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 in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide.

Note:

To troubleshoot issues related to extension installation and updates, see the topics listed in the Extensions topic under Tips and Troubleshooting.

About the Oracle Journals for Financial Management and Oracle BI EE Extensions

The Oracle Journals and Oracle BI EE extension installer files are included in the extensions folder of the Smart View installation. End users can install the Oracle Journals extension or the Oracle BI EE extension directly from the extensions folder of their Smart View installation, simply by double-clicking the .svext file for each.

Or, as administrator, you can control how your Smart View end users install the Oracle Journals and Oracle BI EE extensions, automatically or manually, via the Extensions page of the Smart View Options dialog box.

If you choose to set up automatic or manual installations of the Oracle Journals extension, you should install Smart View in a test environment first, then refer to the UpdateList.xml file, found in the extensions folder of your Smart View installation. Use the entries in this file as a guideline for the entries you will add to the UpdateList.xml file, as described in Configuring Manual Extension Updates.