This topic describes the basic features of setting preferences, navigating the catalog, and accessing task menus.
Topics:
If your implementation of BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE), you access BI Publisher through the Oracle BI EE application. See Introduction to Oracle BI Enterprise Edition in User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
You can access Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher by logging in with credentials or as a guest.
You can access BI Publisher in the following ways:
You can get started with BI Publisher application by signing in with your credentials.
After you log in,
To set user preferences, see My Account Preferences and Groups.
To browse the catalog, see Browse the Catalog.
To schedule reports, see Navigate to the Schedule Report Job Page.
If your administrator has enabled guest access, then a Guest button displays on the Sign In page.
A guest user does not require credentials and has privileges only to view reports available in the folder set up for guest access.
Use the My Account dialog to view your account preferences and groups.
Your preferences may be inherited from another Oracle product. If this is true for your work environment, you cannot update your preferences from within BI Publisher. If you are not sure where to update your preferences, ask your administrator.
When BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE), the Report Locale, UI Language, and Time Zone user preferences are set in the Oracle BI EE application. When you update your BI Publisher preferences in Oracle BI EE, you must start a new BI Publisher HTTP session for these to take effect in the BI Publisher interface.
Use the My Account dialog to set general preferences and the options on the General tab.
Use the General tab to set the following options:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Report Locale |
A locale is a language and territory combination, for example, English (United States) or French (Canada). BI Publisher uses the report locale selection to determine the following:
If a particular report does not have a translation for the selected locale, BI Publisher applies a locale fallback logic to select the most appropriate layout available. See Locale Selection Logic in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. BI Publisher applies localized number, date, and currency formatting independently of the layout translation. |
UI Language |
If your implementation of BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition , you cannot change the UI language here. See Setting Preferences in User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. |
Time Zone |
Reports display the time according to the time zone preference selected here. You can override this setting when creating a scheduled report job, see Creating Report Jobs. The time displayed on the user interface and reflected in report processing times is governed by the BI Publisher server time zone. The Administrator can override your individual time zone setting so that all reports or some reports use the same system time zone setting instead. |
Accessibility Mode |
Turning on the Accessibility mode enables the accessibility features if you use only the keyboard to interact with BI Publisher. When Accessibility Mode is enabled,
|
Email Addresses | This field is reserved for future use and is not functional in this release. |
Use the Password tab to change your password.
If your account password settings are inherited from another application, then you cannot update your password here.
The Home page provides an intuitive, task-based window for the BI Publisher functions.
The Home page consists of the following sections:
The Create section provides links to initiate creation tasks, such as create report, create report job and create data model.
In the Create section, click More to access options not shown. Oracle BI Publisher populates this list based on the permissions or roles you have.
Task | More Information |
---|---|
Create Report |
See in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. |
Create Style Template |
Creating and Implementing Style Templates
See in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. |
Create Subtemplate |
See in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. |
Create Report Job |
|
Create Data Model |
See in in Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. |
Use the Browse/Manage region from the Home page to quickly begin a specific task by accessing catalog folders, report jobs, and report job history links.
The Jobs section of the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Home page provides access to the Report Jobs and the Report Jobs History pages, where you can view and manage scheduled, running, and completed report jobs.
The Recent section contains the reports and other objects that you have recently viewed, created, or updated.
You can take actions on these objects directly from the Recent region. For example, you can open, edit, schedule, and view jobs or job history for a report.
When BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, this region is updated only when the BI Publisher objects are accessed from the Oracle BI EE interface.
The Favorites region enables you to create your own list of objects for quick access.
From the Favorites region you can view, schedule, configure, or edit the objects that you place there provided you have proper permissions. You can use one of the following ways to add objects to the Favorites region:
The More option of the object in the catalog
The Actions menu from the Report Viewer.
The Manage link on the Home page to add reports.
You can add and delete reports from the Favorites region by using the Manage link. You can select the report in the Catalog pane and drag the report to the Favorites region.
The catalog stores the BI Publisher objects, such as reports, data models, and style templates.
Use the Catalog page to locate objects in the catalog and perform tasks specific to those objects. The objects and options that are available to you are determined by your system privileges and the permissions assigned to individual folders and objects.
Note:
When you create folders in the catalog, don't use special characters (~, !, #, $, %, ^, &, *, +, `, |, :, ", \\, <, >, ?, ,, /) in the names of the folder.You can use the Catalog page to perform more specialized tasks such as:
Setting object-level permissions
Downloading and uploading objects
Exporting and importing catalog translations
Use the global header search feature to quickly locate an object by type and name from anywhere in the catalog.
From the Search menu, select the object type and enter all or part of the object's name in the search field. Click the Search button to display the results that match your criteria.
From the results page you can select and perform an action on an object from the results, filter the search results, or start a new search.
Note:
When using BI Publisher as part of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, ensure that your Administrator has configured BI Publisher to use the BI Search Fields; otherwise BI Publisher reports do not show up in the search results.
Download the BI Publisher desktop tools to use the Template Builder and the Template Viewer.
You can download the BI Publisher desktop tools from:
Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Home page
The BI Publisher desktop tools contain additional products that you can download and install. If you're designing BI Publisher RTF or Excel templates, select the Template Builder for Word, which downloads the BI Publisher Desktop installer.
BI Publisher Home page
BI Publisher Desktop includes:
Template Builder for Microsoft Word
Template Builder for Microsoft Excel
Template Viewer
This add-in for Microsoft Word facilitates the design of RTF templates.
The Template Builder for Excel is included in the Template Builder for Word installation. The Template Builder for Excel is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that facilitates the design of Excel Templates.
The Template Viewer enables the testing of most template types from your desktop.
Oracle SQL Developer is a free and fully supported graphical tool for database development. With SQL Developer, you can browse database objects, run SQL statements and SQL scripts, and edit and debug PL/SQL statements. You can also run any number of provided reports, as well as create and save your own. SQL Developer enhances productivity and simplifies your database development tasks.
See Creating RTF Templates Using the Template Builder for Wordand Creating Excel Templates.