General Guidelines

The report template should contain a report header and footer unless it is a legal requirement to exclude them, or it is a report type (such as a letter or invoice) that does not require a header.

The use of tables to organize information (including header information) on a report is required. This is necessary because of the way the XML is formatted and for translations. The table borders should be turned off for the table in the header so that they do not appear in the final output document.

Important: Do not use Microsoft Word's built in features for page headers and footers, because they cause performance issues with Oracle BI Publisher. Use <?start:body?> <?end body?>. Everything above <?start:body?> is interpreted as page header information by the BI Publisher engine, and everything below <?end body?> is interpreted as footer information.

Include a page header on every page of a report and span the entire page width. Include the following information in the page header:

Feature	Position	Comment
Report Title	Centered in the page header
Report Version Description or Subtitle	Upper-centered under Report Title	Optional
Company Logo	Upper-left page corner
Report Date and Time	Upper-right page corner	Report time is optional
Page Number	Upper-right page corner under the Report Date	Use "Page x of x" format

This is an example of a correctly designed page header:

Include a page footer on every page of a report and span the entire page width. Include the following information in the page footer:

Feature	Position	Comment
Report ID/Version ID/Template Name	Lower-left page corner
Confidential Label	Centered in the page footer	Optional

This is an example of a correctly designed page footer: