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OBIEE Updates

February 15, 2018

OBI “By the Numbers” – January 2018

  • 1,391: Number of distinct users that ran financial dashboards in OBI (Up 300 from November!)
  • 173,848: Number of distinct requests made using the financial dashboards, about half of which were from the “Transaction Listing All” dashboard (99,839 requests)
  • 1,442: Number of people trained on the OBI Financial dashboards to date

Completion of the Modernization of Financial Reporting Project

After six years, the Modernization of Financial Reporting Project (MFR) has come to an end on January 31, 2018.  This project was dedicated to migrating the 105 reports in the old Common Reporting Environment for the Warehouse (CREW) reporting platform to Oracle Business Intelligence.  The reports included such subject areas as finance, grants management, cash management, capital planning and student financials among others.

Data Management Services (DMS) worked with individuals from Central Administration and the schools through the established Working Groups and Engagement Councils.  DMS would like to extend its gratitude to the many people who have contributed to this project.   

Data Management Services will continue to support the Oracle Business Intelligence platform after the completion of the MFR project with dedicated staff through the monthly release process and support of the Help Desk.

OBI February Monthly Release

The next OBI release will begin on Thursday, February 22nd at 6 p.m.  All changes will be implemented and the release complete by 9 a. m. on Friday, February 23rd.  Keep an eye on the OBI Release Notes wiki page for details of dashboard changes in this release.

OBI Tip of the Month: System Time Out

If you have been inactive in an administrative application for 30 minutes or more, you will be “timed out,” meaning that you will not be able to do anything in the application until you have logged in again. 

Unfortunately, a user is not warned in OBI when he/she has timed out of the system.  When you have been inactive in OBI for 30 minutes or more, you may experience one or more of the following issues:

  • You attempt to do something on the dashboard or click on the Dashboards menu, it just “spins”
  • The Apply button does not work
  • You cannot see any drop downs in the prompts
  • You cannot get the right-click menu to appear or function properly

How to resolve the time out issue – please refer to the OBI Time Out job aid for more details.

  1. Select the Home link at the top of the page to return to the OBI homepage. 
  2. You will see a brief white Signing In screen
  3. You will automatically return to the Home page, and the dashboard you were working with will appear in the Recent section.
  4. Click on the dashboard link to return to the dashboard.
  5. When you have finished with your session in OBI, click the Sign Out button in the top right corner of the page.

Important Note:  When you are timed out, you will lose anything you previously entered/rendered on the dashboard.  You will need to re-enter all previously entered prompts and re-run the dashboard.  If you were using a saved customization, re-apply the customization.  Depending on the number of system users onboard at the time of the time out, your data will be cached by the system and results should return quickly.

OBI Financial Dashboards Instructor Led Training

The MFR Project Team will deliver one last instructor-led Introduction to the OBI Financial Dashboards session on Wednesday, 2/21.  The session will be held in Kresge LL6 at the School of Public Health from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.  Users can register for this session through the Harvard Training Portal or the OBI Training Calendar. 

Additional Resources for OBI

See also: Live, OBIEE, February 2018