2 Getting Started

This topic describes the basic features of setting preferences, navigating the catalog, and accessing task menus.

Topics:

• Accessing Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

• My Account Preferences and Groups

• About the Home Page

• About the Catalog

• Search the Catalog

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.

Accessing Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

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:

• Logging in with Credentials

• Logging in as Guest

Logging in with Credentials

You can get started with BI Publisher application by signing in with your credentials.

1. Navigate to the URL provided by your administrator, for example, http://example.com:9704/xmlpserver.
2. Select the language that you prefer for the Sign In page. Your language selection only remains in effect for the current session of BI Publisher. The next time you sign in to BI Publisher, the original default language is displayed.

   The language selection in the Sign In page does not take effect on any other pages in BI Publisher. To set the overall BI Publisher UI Language, see General Preferences.

   If your implementation of BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, you cannot modify the language selection on the Sign In page.

3. Enter your credentials to sign in to BI Publisher.
4. Click Sign In.

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.

Logging in as Guest

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.

1. Select the language you prefer for the user interface.
2. Click Guest.

My Account Preferences and Groups

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.

To view your account preferences or groups

1. Navigate to the My Account dialog from the global header.
   1. In the global header, click your user name displayed after Signed In As.
   2. Select My Account.
2. Set your account preferences in the General tab.
3. View the groups assigned to you in the My Groups tab.
   Your user groups are the application roles to which you are assigned. You cannot modify this list.

General Preferences

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: The translation to apply to a report layout. The number, date, and currency formatting to apply to the report data. 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, The tables on the user interface pages display options to enable multi-row selection and subsequent action. The assistive technology provides access to menus. Skip to content is enabled. When tabbing into the main page of the application, the first item you tab to is a special field that states Skip to content. When you press the Enter key with focus on an item, the focus skips over the header links to the main body of the page. For example, if you are on the Home page and you tab to Skip to content, and then press Enter, the cursor advances to the Create region with the focus on Report. The focus skips over Search, Help, Sign Out, and other links in the global header. The create report process flow limits the options to make the selection of a data model as the first step in the process. The Administration link is not displayed.
Email Addresses	This field is reserved for future use and is not functional in this release.

Changing Your Password

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.

To change your password:

1. Navigate to the My Account dialog from the global header.
2. Click the Password to change your password.

About the Home Page

The Home page provides an intuitive, task-based window for the BI Publisher functions.

The Home page consists of the following sections:

• Create

• Jobs or Browse/Manage

• Download BI Publisher Desktop Tools

• Recent

• Favorites

Create

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	Creating and Editing Reports 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	Understanding Subtemplates See in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.
Create Report Job	Creating Report Jobs
Create Data Model	Using the Data Model Editor See in in Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

Jobs or Browse/Manage

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.

Recent

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.

Favorites

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.

About the Catalog

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

Browse the Catalog

You can browse the catalog and view the contents of a folder.

1. In the header, click Catalog.
   Use the Folders pane to display and navigate the content of personal, My Folders, and shared folders. All users can access the content in Shared Folders.
2. Select a folder to view its contents in the display area.

Search the Catalog

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 Desktop Tools

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.