Entries from Siebel Essentials tagged with 'BI Publisher'
Brace yourself for Siebel 8.1.1
Change After giving good ol' Free Download Manager (yes this is an official editor's choice recommendation for really cool freeware - see below for more kudos) a sleepless night, I was able to embark on a rather ritual ride of uninstalling the old version of my typical 3-pack of Siebel Developer Web Client, Sample Database and Tools (that is 8.1.0 - dot zero) and replacing it with the latest (8.1.1 - dot one) to have a first sniff. There are some remarkable differences between those two versions which I would like to share with all you early adopters out there. Given the fact that 8.1.0 was never released under general availability, only a few selected humans might ever had an eye on it. Another fact is that 8.1.0 was available under certain limitations for selected customers for example to prepare an upgrade to 8.1 or to evaluate the revamped Loyalty module (now the fourth pillar of Siebel CRM among Sales, Service and Marketing). I also downloaded the fresh-from-the-oven 8.1.1 bookshelf and made my way through some very recommended literature, the "What's New in this Release" chapters of the guides that are relevant to you (e.g. Installation Guide). These are the first details I am posting on 8.1.1 and I am quite sure that more posts will follow. SIA (Siebel Industry Applications aka Verticals) and SBA (Siebel Business Applications aka Horizontals) released separately The Network Image Creator, which you still need to launch after unpacking all those .jar files does not allow you to choose between SBA and SIA. The package you download from edelivery.oracle.com is limited to one of the two. 8.1.1 is a SIA release (containing the Loyalty pillar). Oracle Universal Installer for Developer/Mobile Web Client and Siebel Tools The first thing you will have to say "Hello" to is the oui.exe which launches Oracle Universal Installer. OUI now takes care of installing and configuring the Siebel Developer/Mobile Web Client and Siebel Tools. Not too weird as it prompts for the same parameters as the old Installshield wizard did. However oui leaves a mark of several directories in the client's and tools' installation folders. Oracle Universal Installer busily installing Siebel Developer Web Client, the ad to the right is for Database 11g, not for the Client ;-) The Siebel Sample database is still using the Installshield wizard to copy itself into the client (or tools) directory. Actuate replaced by BI Publisher When I browsed through the Installation Guide for Windows, I noticed a statement that left me somewhat worried: "The Actuate products formerly provided as Siebel Reports Server are no longer shipped with or supported by Siebel CRM version 8.1 or later. Reporting functionality is now available using Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher." This two-sentence statement means a lot of work ahead for all those customers who invested (sometimes heavily) in Actuate reports. Oracle announced its decision to say goodbye to Actuate quite early and version 8.1.0 actually supported both reporting tools side by side. But this short-lived and rarely known coexistence is now over and I feel a little worried about the projects with hundreds of heavily scripted Actuate reports given the fact that an automated migration from an Actuate rol/rod/bas/rox mix to a BI Publisher template is highly impossible. If anyone has more positive news on migrating from Actuate to BI Publisher please share your knowledge in a comment. [Update 2]: The Siebel CRM 8.1.1 Planned Features/SOD document (login required for metalink3) states the planned availability of an Actuate to BIP Migration Tool as part of the BI Publisher server. Stay tuned for updates on that. [Update 3]: As Anonymous points out in his/her comment to this post, Actuate is still supported for existing Siebel customers. I hope there will be more official clarification on that as there might be the need for some extra patches for existing customers (as the installers from edelivery have no Actuate binaries with them - neither for the Mobile/Developer Web Client nor in form of the Siebel Report Server). As the Siebel CRM 8.1.1 Planned Features/SOD document (login required for metalink3) points out, there will be support for Actuate 8 until end of 2009. The document mentions "Post-2009", see below. Customers with earlier Actuate versions will need to upgrade to Actuate 8. I haste to state that I'm a big fan of BI Publisher and consider it the ideal choice but maybe the decision to cut the support for Actuate so quickly was a bit hasty. In version 8.1.0 it was possible to set the System Preference ReportEngineType to BOTH (which is still the default setting in the sample database for 8.1.1) but in 8.1.1 there are no Actuate binaries available, so BIP is the only thing left to create reports. The already obsolete ReportEngineType System Preference is still set to BOTH in the sample db. Siebel Update Server and CTI Connect no longer supported Let me conclude this post with two more statements from bookshelf and join me in saying farewell to the Siebel Update Server and the CTI simulation. "Siebel Update Server and Siebel Update Client are no longer shipped with or supported by Siebel CRM version 8.1 or later." "Siebel CTI Connect is no longer supported as of the current release. CTI Simulation, which used the CTI Connect driver and configuration data, is also no longer supported." Casey Cheng is no longer able to demonstrate CTI functionality, note the error message [Update 1]: SmartAnswer is a dead parrot, too As stated in the Siebel CRM 8.1.1 Planned Features document (download requires login to metalink3), SmartAnswer is no longer sold, albeit supported: "Siebel SmartAnswer is no longer sold as part of the Siebel CRM suite of applications. The product is no longer shipped effective for all new and upgrading customers beginning with Siebel 8.1 / 8.1.1. Existing customers of Siebel SmartAnswer can continue to use their products, but will not be able to buy additional seats." About Free Download Manager Ideal for large downloads (from edelivery.oracle.com) as it integrates in...
Interactive Pivot-style Analysis in Dashboards
Lemon Curry? Being a Siebel guy, BI Publisher was a new product to learn when I ramped up upon Oracle BI EE 10g, the successor of Siebel Analytics. I really love the integration between the "classic" BI EE and BI Publisher. As some of you might recall, Siebel had it's own version of pixel-perfect reporting with Siebel Analytics 7.8.4. In that version, Actuate was integrated with Siebel Analytics and some parameters in instanceconfig.xml are quiet reminders of those times, which of course are over now. Recently, I was preparing a demo for the BI Publisher integration. It is a quick task and I use to do this demo on the fly - just to impress the customer, how easy it is, even I can do it ;-) But I wanted to to something more than just to create a new dashboard page, drag in the BI Publisher Report object and link to the sample report provided with the sample application (be it paint or Sample Sales). So I decided to show how stunningly easy it is to bring an interactive pivot report into a BI Dashboard. BI Publisher incorporates a shy but powerful interactive Analyzer which you can invoke when you are in the BI Publisher Enterprise portal and viewing a report. Just click the Analyze button and you are in the midst of a drag'n'drop pivot-style tool. Cool, I'd say. What's even cooler is that you can save your Analyzer report as a new template, so it adds to your reports layout options. You can then use that template and direct the output to all formats supported (like HTML, PDF, PPT, etc...). These templates are .xpa (Xml Publisher Analyzer) files which can be downloaded, customized (they're plain xml) and uploaded again. Now let's do the trick and click the Link to this report link in the upper right corner. This feature allows you to create a direct URL to that report, maintaining the current layout options. You can do this for any option you choose, so if you're currently viewing a PDF output, you'll get a URL which allows you to download the PDF report (voice from off: "Alright, they got it now.") Next we can use the Embedded Content object in the dashboard editor and paste the URL there and save the dashboard layout. The result: A dashboard page which allows an end user to interact with the data using simple drag and drop pivot patterns. Cool, I'd say again....
Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4 has arrived
A new release of Oracle BI EE, formerly known as Siebel Analytics has been made available for download last week. There are several new features and interesting points about the product direction. My personal highlights are: Integration with EPM Workspace and Smart SpaceDiscoverer .eex to .rpd migration toolNew sample application with support for marketing segmentationEnhanced wsdl support for BI PublisherEnhanced DAC Client (released independently) that supports upgrades from Analytics 7.8.4 But let's discuss each feature in detail. Most of this information is taken from the documentation and while the product is still hot from the oven, I was lucky to try a few things. As with all new features, they will have to prove their practicability in real life. We'll see... General New Features Integration with Oracle EPM Workspace, Fusion Edition Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Workspace (EPM Workspace) is a component of Oracle's Hyperion Foundation Services. It is the central Web interface for users to access all Performance Management content and tools. In the new release, the following Oracle BI EE applications have been integrated into EPM Workspace: Oracle BI AnswersInteractive DashboardsDeliversBI Publisher Integration with Oracle Smart Space, Fusion Edition Oracle Smart Space is a personalized information delivery solution for Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management that uses configurable desktop gadgets to deliver BI and EPM to every user in the enterprise, utilizing the Windows desktop. In addition, Oracle Smart Space includes a development toolkit for creating additional gadgets that employs common development languages and methodologies and a secure instant messaging system for shared decision making. You can launch and interact with Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, Answers requests and BI Publisher reports in the Smart Space Content Viewer and Smart Book gadget and add them to the Favorites gadget. You can use Smart Space Collaborator to share Oracle BI content with other Smart Space users. You can also configure iBot results to be sent as Smart Space notifications and view these in the Notification gadget. You can set up for users to download Oracle Smart Space and Oracle Smart View for Microsoft Office from within Oracle BI. Once Smart Space is connected to Oracle BI, you can use Windows Explorer to browse the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog and see the folders (Shared Folders and My Folders) and documents (Dashboard and Answers request) that are available to you. Migrate Discoverer eex files to rpd files The new release includes a utility to accelerate the migration of Oracle BI Discoverer metadata (in the form of an EEX file, version 10.1.2 or higher) to Oracle BI EE metadata (in the form of an RPD file). The utility is a command line executable (MigrateEUL.exe) and accompanying properties file that can be found in the \OracleBI\Server\bin directory. An instruction document can be found in the \OracleBI\Server\Document directory. Reading the document, you find a chapter named "Why migrate to Oracle BI EE?" and the answer is given as a summary of the Oracle BI EE functionality and benefits. The rest is up to you... The screenshots below show a first encounter with the utility. I have converted a simple Discoverer EUL into an rpd file. It completed the task without errors, however there is additional manual work to be expected within the rpd file. migrateEUL.exe command line utility, click to enlarge rpd file generated by migrateEUL.exe, click to enlarge Time-aware line charts A new type of line chart (Line Time Series) is available to plot time series data. The chart automatically scales the X-axis based on the time that has elapsed between data points. The chart requires a single date or date-time data column to be selected on the X-axis. It has a single Y-axis, but supports multiple data series. There are several formatting restrictions for this chart type. New line time series chart, click to enlarge Support for Oracle WebLogic Server 10.x. (formerly known as BEA WebLogic Server) You can use Oracle BI EE and Oracle BI Publisher with the Oracle WebLogic Server New Sample Oracle BI Application and Data Set A new sample Oracle BI application and data set called "Sample Sales" has been designed to better and more fully illustrate the capabilities of Oracle BI 10.1.3.4. It showcases presentation (Answers formula building, resentation Variables, Filtering, Layouts, Navigations, and so on) and modeling techniques. The content is designed to demonstrate as much as possible of OBI EE capabilities and is primarily meant to help customers who want examples and templates to extract ideas from. This new set is meant to replace the former Paint sample content. The new Sample Sales application includes numerous reports organized in 20 dashboard pages around the following: Rankings and ToppersTrends and HistoryTiering and DistributionDetailed ReportsLists and Segmentation (Marketing) Particularly nice features of the new sample application are the detailed help and the good quality of sample data. I am also positively surprised about the presence of marketing metadata, because the marketing segmentation functionality is something that probably only a few people using Siebel Marketing are aware of, yet it can be used standalone as well. Sample Sales comes with a detailed online help, click to enlarge. The Rankings and Toppers dashboard of the new sample sales application Marketing Segmentation: Prompted Segmentation and Contact Planning Rules The segment designer now supports the "is prompted" operator as filter criteria which enables passing of values (such as a list of customer Ids) into the segment, thus enabling dynamic segments for so-called event triggered campaigns (also referred to as inbound campaigns). Contact planning rules allow a company to place volume, frequency and recency rules on all forms of communication across customer, channel, and program dimensions. Rules are created as special segments which act as a filter for other segments. Segment Tree Designer New Features for Oracle BI Publisher Besides the integration with EPM and Smart Space, which we have discussed above, there are the following notable new features for BI Publisher: Support for multidimensional data sources Oracle BI Publisher can now access the following multidimensional data sources: Oracle's Hyperion EssbaseMicrosoft SQL Server 2000...
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