OBIEE 11g - Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

One of the important new feature is Performance Management objects in the new version of OBIEE 11g. These kind of features were not implemented in the previous version.  I’m going to demonstrate how to create KPI object in OBIEE 11g. 

After you login to OBI, you’ll see create section on the left side. You’ll just click “Create a new KPI” link and it’s going to ask to select the subject area as usual. I use “Sample Sales Lite” subject area in my demo.

There are 4 parts for creating the KPI:

1- General

2- Dimensionality

3-Thresholds

4- Related Documents

In the “General Section” you’ll have to specify the “Business Owner”. Based on the KPI values, you’ll be able to contact with the “Business Owner”.  You must select one measure column for the “Actual Value” and another measure column for the “Target Value”. Just a simple example: Units Ordered and Units Shipped. Another option is “Trending”. If you’ve created a Time dimension in the repository, you’ll gain benefit of trending option. By using this option, you’ll be able to compare periods. 

In the dimensionality page, you’ll select the dimensions and levels that you want to focus on. And if you don’t want to select a value for the member, you just write “Not Pinned”.

In the thresholds page, you specify the threshold values. By default, you can specify only 2 values but it’s customizable. You can create more threshold values and also you can use custom images. 

In the last page named “Related Documents”, you just specify the links for additional documents, web pages or sample reports. This is optional but good have descriptions for the KPI.

Then you’ll save the KPI. 

After you save the KPI in the Presentation Catalog, you have several options to publish the KPI. Here are some examples:

• Pusblish in the dashboard.
• Use in Balanced Scorecard.
• Publish in the KPI watchlists.

As a result I’m going to publish new articles about using KPIs. 

OBIEE PLUS - Customizing User Interface

OBIEE lets you to customize the user interface. I’m going to demonstrate this customization and change the logo in the dashboard. The user interface files are located in the OracleBI installation folder. Path is “OracleBI\web\app\res”

First, I’m going to copy one of the existing folder. I used the copy of the s_Siebel77.

Then rename the new folder as “s_CustomStyle”. The folder name should start with “s_”.

You’ll find the banner file in the “s_CustomStyle”.

So I’m going to use paint.exe to modify the existing bg_Banner.gif file. After modifying this file, I restart the “Oracle BI Presentation Server” service.

Then I log in to the Presentation Server.

And edit the dashboard from the “Page Options”. In the dashboard properties I’m going to change “style” attribute to “CustomStyle” which is the name of the folder.

As a result, I can see the new logo in the dashboard.

OBIEE PLUS - Write Back Option

I’m going to explain the steps for enabling write back option in a request. It’s easy to implement this feature with OBIEE Plus.

First of all, I create a table named “Sales”. The output of the query is below:

Next step is to import the table definition into the repository of OBIEE. Important point is I disable the cache option of the physical table in the *.rpd file.

I add the physical table to the BMM layer and I don’t configure the default aggregation rule for the column “Dollars”. So aggregation rule is set to “None”. As it is below:

Then I add the logical table to presentation layer in order to let end users to access this table. I finish my task in the rpd file.

Now the next step will be creating a simple request in the “Answers” section.

Then I change column properties of “Dollars” and set the type property to “Write back” in the value interaction section.

Then I check the result set of the query by accessing the “Results” tab. I just enable the write back option.

After enabling write back option, I set the attributes of this feature:

And the last step in the Answers section is to save the request. So the view of the request is changed.

Now here is the important step. I create a xml file in the custom messages folder.

Of course the contents of the xml file is very important. I only want to update the existing row. So that’s why I only use “Update” statement in the XML file. This content of the file is case sensitive.

Then I restart Oracle BI Presentation Server.

And I can change the values in the tables by using OBIEE.