Automate Business Processes With Agents

Content authors can create agents that deliver analyses, dashboards, and briefing books to targeted audiences on-demand or on a regular schedule.

Topics:

• What Are Agents?

• What Are Alerts?

• How Agents Work

• What Is the Agent Editor?

• About Controlling Access to Agents

• About Using Customization in Agents

• Create Agents to Deliver Content

• Schedule an Agent to Deliver Content Directly from an Analysis

• Disable and Enable the Schedule for an Agent

• Subscribe to Agents

• List Agents You Subscribe To or Own

• Access and Manage Your Alerts

What Are Agents?

Agents enable you to automate your business processes.

You can use agents to provide event-driven alerting, scheduled content publishing, and conditional event-driven action execution.

You can choose:

• A schedule that the Agent runs on

• A data condition that determines what the Agent does

• An analysis that can be distributed

• Actions that can be automatically executed depending on whether the data condition is met

Agents can dynamically detect information-based problems and opportunities, determine the appropriate individuals to notify, and deliver information to them through a wide range of devices (email, phones, and so on).

The delivery content of an agent is localized according to the preferred locale of the recipient. (Users specify their preferred locale in the Preferences tab of the My Account dialog.)

What Are Alerts?

An alert is a notification generated by an agent that delivers personalized and actionable content to specified recipients and to subscribers to the agent.

You can see the alerts that have been delivered to you, for example:

• In the Alerts section of the Home page.

• On the first page of My Dashboard. (An Alerts section is automatically added to the first page of My Dashboard, if you don't manually place one there.)

• On a dashboard page, if the content designer adds an Alerts section to the page.

• In the Alerts dialog displayed from the Alerts! button in the global header.

• In specified delivery devices, such as a phone.

How Agents Work

In the simplest format, an agent automatically performs a specified catalog analysis based on a defined schedule, and examines the results for a specific problem or opportunity.

If the specified problem or opportunity is detected in the results, then the agent generates an alert and delivers it to specified recipients and to subscribers to the agent, using the delivery options that are specified for each person.

See What Are Alerts? and Configure Your Devices and Delivery Profile.

To handle more complex requirements, agents can invoke actions that trigger other agents, scripts, Java programs, or applications. Results can be passed between agents, and to other applications or services through XML, HTML, or plain text. For example, an agent might run an analysis to identify all current product orders over a specified dollar amount that can't be filled from a regional warehouse. The results can be passed to another agent that runs an analysis to locate alternative sources for these products. A final agent might be triggered to feed information into a corporate CRM system and to notify the appropriate account representatives of the alternative sourcing.

You might automatically be a recipient of alerts generated by some agents, and agents created by others might be available for you to subscribe to. You can also create your own agents if you have the appropriate permissions and responsibilities. Depending on the level of authority that you have, you can selectively share agents with others or make agents available for all users.

What Is the Agent Editor?

The agent editor enables you to create agents to deliver personalized and actionable content to users. It also lets you view a summary of the current settings of agents.

The agent editor contains the following tabs:

• General — Enables you to specify the priority of the content that an agent is to deliver and how to generate the delivery content (that is, what user to run the query as).

• Schedule — Enables you to specify whether the agent is to be run based on a schedule, how often it runs, and when its running is to start and end.

• Condition — Enables you to specify whether an agent always delivers its content and executes its actions, or conditionally delivers its content and executes its actions.

• Delivery Content — Enables you to specify the content to deliver with an agent, such as a dashboard page or a saved analysis.

• Recipients — Enables you to specify who is to receive the delivery content of the agent and who's allowed to subscribe to the agent.

• Destinations — Enables you to specify where the content is delivered.

• Actions — Enables you to specify one or more actions to execute when an agent finishes.

You access the agent editor when you create or edit an agent.

About Controlling Access to Agents

Access to agents is available to all users.

You grant access to specific agent functions from the Manage Privileges page. If you have the appropriate authority, then you can grant or deny explicit access to a variety of agent privileges, including the ability to perform the following actions:

• Create agents

  To create an agent, users must be granted the Access to Delivers privilege, the Create Agent privilege, and the View Delivers Full UX privilege.

• Publish agents for subscription

  To enable users with the Publish Agents for Subscription privilege, which provides the ability to change or to delete an agent, you must grant them the Modify permission to the shared agent objects and child objects in the Presentation Catalog.

• Deliver agents to specified or dynamically determined users

• Chain agents

• Modify current subscriptions for agents

About Using Customization in Agents

Using customization in agents enables you to create generic agents that you can use for more than one circumstance.

Using customizations in agents helps you to reduce the number of agents and conditions that you must create for your organization. It also lets you provide the specific alert required for a particular circumstance.

You can customize an agent by overriding the operators and values of prompted filters associated with analyses that are used in the agent. (A prompted filter is a filter whose operator is set to Is Prompted).

You use analyses in an agent when you specify that the agent is to:

• Conditionally deliver its content and execute its actions using a condition (either named or inline) that is based on an analysis.

• Deliver an analysis as its content.

Prompted filters can be customized at various points, depending on how the analysis with which it is associated is used:

• If the analysis is used as the basis for a named condition, then the chain for customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the named condition

  3. In the agent customization of the condition

  4. In the subscription customization of the agent condition

• If the analysis is used as the basis for an inline condition created in an agent, then the chain of customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the agent customization of the condition

  3. In the subscription customization of the agent condition

• If the analysis is specified as the delivery content for an agent, then the chain for customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the agent customization of the delivery content

  3. In the subscription customization of the delivery content

When using customization in an agent, keep the following points in mind:

• Once a filter is overridden, it can't be overridden again further in the customization chain. For example, if you override a filter in the agent customization of the delivery content, then the subscriber can't override it later in the subscription customization of the delivery content.

• If any filters in an analysis are combined (that is, constructed using AND and OR), then this AND and OR structure isn't displayed in the customization.

• If the same filters are used more than once in an agent, then only a unique set of the filters is displayed for customization. The customized values that you specify are applied to all instances of the repeated filter.

  Exception: If the analysis is the result of combining two or more analyses based on a union operation, then unique filters from each part of the union are displayed for customization.

• Filters passed between agents participating in a chain don't support customization. The filters passed from the parent agent are those without subscriber customizations. The filters passed to the child agent replace the respective prompted filters before subscriber customizations are applied.

Create Agents to Deliver Content

You can create agents that deliver analyses, dashboard pages, and briefing books to specific recipients and subscribers. These agents can deliver content on-demand or on a regular schedule.

1. From the global header, click Create and select Agent.
2. Optional: Set some general options for the agent.
   1. Set a priority level for the agent.
      Consider the importance of the content you want to deliver.
   2. Define how you want to generate the content, that is, which user do you want to run report queries as.
3. Set up a delivery schedule.
   1. Click the Schedule tab.
   2. Select whether you want the agent to run on a schedule, how often it runs, when to start, and when to stop.

      When you select the date and time, for time zones where daylight savings applies, the time zone reflects the daylight savings time. For example, if, during the summer months, you select (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time: Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London, this means BST (British Summer Time).

      The minimum frequency for daily run by delivery agent is 15 minutes.

4. Optional: Click the Condition tab, and select Use a condition if you want the agent to only run under certain conditions.
   • Click Create to define the condition.
   • Click Browse to select an existing condition from the catalog.
   Keep the default (Do not use a condition), if you want the agent always deliver its content.
5. Select the content you want to deliver, such as a dashboard page or an analysis.
   1. Click the Delivery Content tab.
   2. Select the content you want to deliver and the format you want to send.
6. Specify who you want the content to be delivered to and who else is allowed to subscribe to this agent.
   1. Click the Recipients tab.
   2. Click Add Recipient to add users individually or add users by their application role.
   3. Click Add Email Recipient to enter the email address of one or more recipient.
   4. Click Get Recipients from the Analysis Used in the Agent Condition and select analysis columns from a condition used by this Agent. At runtime this adds recipients who are configured (email address) for the selected columns used in the condition.

      If you select this option the agent must be saved under Shared Folders.

   5. Click Only Return Rows Relevant to the User Running the Agent to only return data available to the user.
   6. To allow other people to subscribe to this agent, select Publish Agent for Subscription and then define who can subscribe, by selecting their user name or an application role.

      This option is only available for agents or reports saved in Shared Folders.

7. Specify how you want content to be delivered to the recipients. You can send deliveries to the users Home Page and Dashboard, by email, and to devices such as mobile phones and pagers.
   1. Click the Destinations tab.
   2. Click Home Page and Dashboard to deliver content. Users receive alerts in Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence whenever deliveries are sent to them.
   3. Click Devices to deliver the content in other ways.
      • To let users decide how they receive deliveries, select Active Delivery Profile. See Configure Your Devices and Delivery Profile.
      • To restrict the types of devices that deliveries can be sent to, select Specific Devices and select only the device types you want.
      Users set up their deliveries profile through Delivery Options preferences (My Account).
8. Save the agent.

   If you want other people to subscribe to the agent, you must save it in a subfolder under /Shared Folders so they can find it. For example, /Shared Folders/MySharedAgents/Sales/MonthlySalesTarget_Agent.

   After saving the agent, you can run the agent by clicking the Run Agent Now button. This is helpful, for example, if you want to test the agent.

View Summaries of Agent Settings

You can view a summary of the current settings for an agent.

A summary is displayed in the Agent editor and can be expanded or collapsed. By default, the summary is expanded.

Bear this guideline in mind:

• You can also view a summary of an agent's settings in the Preview pane of the Catalog page.

• To the left of the Overview heading in the Agent editor, click the:

  • Plus button to expand the summary.

  • Minus button to collapse the summary.

Schedule an Agent to Deliver Content Directly from an Analysis

You can set up an agent to deliver content directly from an analysis. When you create an agent in this way, Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence sets the Content property for you and creates a delivery condition for the agent to help you get started.

1. Navigate to the analysis in the catalog.
2. Click the More action menu, and select Schedule.
3. Further define the agent, as required.

Disable and Enable the Schedule for an Agent

You can temporarily disable (and then enable) an agent's schedule.

Disabling an agent's schedule stops the agent from running on its defined schedule. It doesn’t stop you from running it by other means, for example, by the Run Agent Now button in the agent editor.

1. On the Home page, click Catalog and navigate to the agent whose schedule you want to disable or enable.
2. Click the More action menu, and select Disable Schedule to disable the agent's schedule.
3. Click the More action menu, and select Enable Schedule to run the agent on schedule again.

You also can disable and enable an agent's schedule by using the Enabled box in the Schedule tab of the agent editor.

Subscribe to Agents

Subscribe to an agent if you want to receive the most up-to-date information generated by the agent. You can only subscribe to agents if the owner allows you to do so.

1. In the global header, click Catalog.
2. Navigate to the agent you want to subscribe to.
3. Click the More action menu, and select Subscribe.

   To make an agent available for subscription, the owner must select Publish Agent for Subscription (Recipients tab) and identify who’s allowed to subscribe.

4. To unsubscribe at any time, click the More action menu, and select Unsubscribe.

List Agents You Subscribe To or Own

You can display a list of agents that you subscribe to and any agents that you own.

1. In the global header , click Catalog.
2. Click Search.
3. To find all the agents, enter * (asterisk) in the Search box, select All from the Location list, and then select Agent from the Type list.
   Alternatively, enter the name or part of the name of an agent in the Search field, select a specific Location, and then select Agent from the Type list.
4. Click Search.

Access and Manage Your Alerts

Alerts notify you when content arrives from an agent.

1. On the Home page, click Alerts!
2. View and manage your alerts.

   • View the content for an alert.

   • Clear an alert and all its occurrences.

   • Edit the agent that generated the alert, if you have permission to do so.

   • Run the agent that generated the alert, if you have permission to do so.

   • Subscribe to the alert.

   • Clear all your alerts and all their occurrences.