12 Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition 19.x and 23.x

Dashboards and Tiles for RPAS Applications

The Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Service Edition (RPAS CE) platform provides support for Retail Home tile content. Tiles can display information to provide a picture of the performance of a user’s plans and/or forecasts and metrics about the overall health of the business as a whole. The data displayed within Retail Home tiles is drawn from the same source as the data displayed in the in-app dashboard for the RPAS CE solutions; allowing users to launch into the solution and gain more insight into the displayed metrics. Additionally, the RPAS CE platform supports attaching Data Visualizer (DV) reports to tiles to allow users to launch into reports relevant to the metrics displayed.

Due to the fully customizable nature of the RPAS CE platform, the platform itself does not provide any pre-configured Retail Home tiles for use out of the box. Instead, each Template application built on top of the platform provides a template tile configuration tailored to the business processes of that application.

Customer’s wishing to customize the pre-configured Template tile definitions can provide Retail Home tiles that are specific to their business needs. Customers making use of a customized application must also provide a custom Retail Home tile definition that is adapted to the RPAS CE application they are building. For either customer, the process of Retail Home tile configuration is the same; information can be found in the Customized Retail Home Tile Content for Custom Applications content section below.

Seeding Retail Home Data

The RPAS CE platform does not make use of the Refresh Seed data task in Application Navigator. Instead, an Administration task must be run within the RPAS CE application by a user with application administrator privileges. The Retail Home Seeding task provides Retail Home with information about the tiles for the RPAS CE solution as well as configuring metadata within the application to allow the solution to provide the correct application data to Retail Home.

For information about the Retail Home Seeding task, please consult the Batch Administration chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Service Administration Guide.

Additionally, it is required for a user to have a built an application Dashboard workspace within the desired RPAS CE application for that user to see information within the application’s tile in Retail Home. RPAS CE applications use the information within the Dashboard workbook to calculate and return the values requested by Retail Home. Therefore, when the RPAS CE solution is first built, the Schedule Dashboard Build task must run the application for all users. The Schedule Dashboard Build task must also be run for new users when those users are registered in the application. For information on the Schedule Dashboard Build task, please consult the System Administration chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Administration Guide.

Customized Retail Home Content

This section details the process for creating custom Retail Home tile content for applications running on the RPAS CE platform. It also details customizing roles in Retail Home to create sets of tiles for different users and describes how to attach Data Visualizer reports to a Retail Home tile.

Retail Home Tile Content for Customized Applications

The creation of custom Retail Home tile content is a two-part process. The first is performed within the RPAS CE application configuration and RPAS CE Dashboard configuration. This step involves creating a RPAS CE measure, rule, and Dashboard workbook metadata to allow the RPAS CE application to supply requested data to Retail Home. The second step is performed within the Retail Home settings view of the Deployment Tool and involves specifying how the information should be displayed and formatted within Retail Home.

Creation of RPAS CE Application and Dashboard Configuration

Once the desired metrics for a Retail Home tile state have been determined, several actions must be performed so that the RPAS CE application can provide data to Retail Home. Depending on the desired metrics, some or all of these steps may have already been completed (i.e., the metrics in question already exist within the RPAS CE in-application Dashboard). This document allows implementers to examine the state of the existing application and Dashboard configuration and skip steps that are not required.

First, create measure definitions for all metrics to appear within the Retail Home tile (along with any additional measures needed to calculate the values of the displayed metrics). Measures should be configured with the appropriate property values to support the format and level of the data to be displayed. Information on measure configuration can be found in Solutions chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Configuration Tools User Guide.

Next, create a process to populate the measures in step 1 with data. This will involve either a batch data load or a calculation process. Additionally, rules will need to be created within the load or calculation group of the RPAS CE Dashboard workbook to load persisted data into the workbook or to calculate derived measures as part of building or refreshing the workbook. Information on specifying batch data load and calculation tasks can be found in Implementation chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Implementation Guide and Batch Administration chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Administration Guide. Information on the creation of rules within the application configuration can be found in Solutions chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Configuration Tools User Guide.

Next, perform configuration in the RPAS CE Dashboard workbook to add the desired metrics to the dashboard view. Only measures present in the view used to supply data to the RPAS CE Dashboard are able to supply data to Retail Home. This does imply that measures that are unsuitable for use in the Dashboard (due to non-conforming intersections or other irregularities) are not candidates for inclusion in Retail Home tiles. Information on using the Workbook Definition screen can be found in Solutions chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Configuration Tools User Guide. General information about the process of configuration in regard to the Dashboard can be found in Configuring Dashboards chapter in RPAS CE of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Configuration Tools User Guide.

Please note that the last reference also describes configuring RPAS CE Dashboard tiles to display metrics within the RPAS CE Dashboard. Although the metrics desired in Retail Home may also provide value within the RPAS CE Dashboard, it is not a requirement to display them there and that part of the process outlined in the Configuring Dashboards in RPAS CE chapter may be omitted if the metrics are only meant to be displayed in Retail Home.

Once the above steps have been performed (or once it has been determined that the steps had already been performed to display the data in an RPAS CE Dashboard tile), the metric data desired in Retail Home is present in the RPAS CE Dashboard workbook.

Creation of Retail Home Settings Content

As the second process step, a Retail Home Configuration Resource file defines the presentation layer configuration that determines how that information is made available in the form of tiles.

Configuration of Retail Home tile settings information is performed within the RetailHomeConfig.json view of the RPAS CE Deployment Tool. Implementers can either create a new configuration (if beginning a custom configuration from scratch) or open an existing configuration (when modifying an existing configuration). Within this view, implementers can create a set of tile definitions, each definition corresponding to a single tile state that can appear in the Retail Home tile for the application.

The first choice when creating a new tile definition is the selection of the tile type. Retail Home supports several layouts for data in a tile; not all types are automatically supported for use with RPAS CE applications.

Depending on the tile layout selected, the implementer will need to supply information about the elements of that layout, specifying which metrics appear in which locations along with formatting information for the metric (the measures displayed in Retail Home support different format options than those supported in the display within the RPAS CE UI). Additionally, tile types that contain charts require specification of information to format the chart (e.g. axis labels, chart type, etc.).

Once the required information is configured for all desired tiles, a configuration file containing the information is saved from within the tool as a JSON file. The Deployment Tool also provides a Resource Bundle Customization (Resource Translation) option to create a properties file containing the keys to support the translation of the various labels within the Retail Home tile for internationalization.

Detailed information on the tile configuration process can be found in the Retail Home Dashboard Settings section of the Deployment Tool chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Configuration Tools User Guide.

Finally, to use the configuration and/or resource file ( created in the step above, it is necessary to upload the resources to the cloud environment and run the Retail Home Seeding Administrative task, as detailed in the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Administration Guide Retail Home Seeding section. Please note that RPAS-based applications do not make use of the Retail Home Seeding task within Retail Home application described in the Overview of this document; the task described here is to be used instead.

Customizing Roles and Tiles available to Roles in Retail Home

RPAS applications are provisioned with a set of standard business roles that represent personae in the business process of the application such as Planner or Manager. The Template application Retail Home configurations for an RPAS application assign the various pre-configured tile states to one or more of the default roles so that individual users will have access to those tile reports that correspond to their roles as defined in OCI IAM.

Implementers of customized applications will need to perform the same mapping of tiles to OCI IAM roles as part of the customer Retail Home configuration process. This is done through the specification of the Roles property for a tile definition as described in the Retail Home Dashboard Settings section of the Deployment Tool chapter of the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Configuration Tools User Guide.

It is also possible to manage roles and tile assignments within Retail Home after the initial seeding of Retail Home configuration content. Retail Home administrative users can create dashboards for additional roles created within OCI IAM and add and remove tiles and tile states from the set available to users of a given role. Information on the process of assigning tiles to OCI IAM roles can be found in the Application Navigator Setup chapter of the Oracle Retail Home Administration Guide. Information on managing roles within OCI IAM can be found <find proper link for IAM documentation>.

Configuring Data Visualizer Expanded Reports for Retail Home

Retail Home supports integration with Data Visualizer (DV) with the tiles of a Retail Home dashboard. A report created and maintained within Data Visualizer can be added as an expanded report to the tile for an RPAS CE based application. This process cannot be performed as a part of the application configuration detailed above. Instead, it must be performed by a Retail Home administrative user within Retail Home after the RPAS application is built and metrics detailed in DV, DV reports created with a BI metric template, and Retail Home Custom Reports and Dashboard tile defined to align to the DV reports.

Information on the steps involved in creating Data Visualizer reports is out of scope for this document but can be found in the Oracle documentation library for Oracle Analytics. Information on how to attach an existing Data Visualizer report to a Retail Home tile as an expanded report can be found in the Custom Tile State Reports Configuration chapter of the Oracle Retail Home Administration Guide.