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OBIEE Update

September 11, 2018

This update relates to the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

OBI “By the Numbers” for August 2018

  • 99.1%: Percentage of queries that completed in 1 minute or under
  • 1,339: Number of distinct users in OBI for ALL subject areas
  • 165,392: Number of distinct requests made in ALL subject areas
  • The “Transaction Listing All” dashboard alone continues to make up almost half of all the requests at the university (77,780 requests)

Monthly OBI Release

Data Management Services (DMS) is pleased to announce that the next monthly OBI release will begin on Thursday, September 27th at 6pm.  All changes will be implemented and the release complete by 9am on Friday, September 28th.  Check out the newly updated OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page for details of the dashboard changes in this release.

To see which backlog items have been resolved to date, please review the Backlog on the OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page.  (Information about the Backlog and a link to the Backlog itself can be found at the bottom of the wiki page.)  Going forward a member of DMS will contact the person who requested the change to inform him/her of the outcome.

OBI Cloud Migration

Data Management Services is on-track to migrate its databases and applications out of 60 Oxford Street as part of HUIT’s Cloud Migration Program.  The OBI Production Servers were migrated from 60 Oxford Street to Summer Street on the evening of Friday, August 31st.    

As part of the HUIT Cloud Migration, the Harvard Data Warehouse (HDW) will be migrated from Thursday, September 20th at 8pm to Tuesday, September 25th at 9am.  During this time, OBI will not be available.  As of 9am on Tuesday, September 25th, the migration is expected to be complete and the OBI dashboards will be available.

If you have questions, please email huit-dms-data-help@harvard.edu. For more information about the upcoming HDW Cloud migration, please review this month’s eNews article entitled “Harvard Data Warehouse Cloud Migration: Sept 20-24, 2018.”

OBI Upgrade to Version 12c

Data Management Services has initiated a project to upgrade OBI from version 11g to version 12c.  DMS is beginning to evaluate the user experience and user interface impact, if any, that this upgrade will have on the user community.  DMS will share the findings of this evaluation with the user community later in the year once the impact is known.  The upgrade is expected to be complete by April, 2019.

Update on Service Unavailable Error Messages

Some OBI users continue to receive the Service Unavailable messages. DMS implemented a configuration change on the evening of Wednesday, August 8th but it did not have the intended result of reducing the number of errors.

DMS is bringing Oracle Consulting on-site to perform a formal architectural assessment of the OBI environment. This work will begin in September, and we hope to make material progress by the end of the month. This engagement will also help us build a more robust architecture for when OBI moves to the AWS Cloud in the spring.

In the meantime, there is a workaround for this issue that can be found in Knowledge Base article KB0013561, entitled “OBI FAQ: I have received a ‘Service Unavailable’ Message when I try to use OBI. What should I do?” While this workaround is straightforward, we realize that this has been frustrating for users. We appreciate your patience, and are working very hard to resolve the issue.

Quick Tip: Sorting Options in OBI

Here’s a helpful summary of how sorting works in OBI, and how you change the primary sort and add secondary or even tertiary sorts to your data:

The Default Sort

When you first render a dashboard in OBI, the default sort will be on the column that is found in the farthest left-hand cell.   If it is not possible to sort on the first column, OBI will then sort on the second column, and so forth.

Adding a Primary Sort

There are three ways to add a primary sort to your dashboard:

  1. If you move a column to the farther left-hand cell, the dashboard will be sorted based on that value, in ascending order. 
  2. Hover your mouse over the column heading of the column you wish to sort.    You will see two triangles.  The triangle pointing up is Sort Ascending while the triangle pointing down is Sort Descending.  Click on the sort option you prefer.  When you apply the sort, the triangles will appear to the right of the column heading, and the triangle representing the option for sorting you selected will be darkened.  This is your visual cue that you have sorted the dashboard.
  3. Right-click on the column you wish to sort to bring up the menu.  Select Sort Column, then either Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.

Adding Secondary and/or Tertiary Sorts

Once you have set your primary sort, you can add a secondary sort by right-clicking on the column heading to bring up the right-click menu.  Select either Add Ascending Sort or Add Descending Sort. 

Continue to follow these same steps to create a tertiary sort.  You can continue to sort as you wish.

For more information, consult our Sorting Columns in OBI job aid, or view our video demo, Transaction Listing: Moving Columns to Prompts, Sections and Sorting.

Additional Resources for OBI

See also: Live, OBIEE, September 2018