Modify System Settings in Oracle Analytics Cloud

Have you ever felt the need to modify the analytics system settings in an easier way other than getting inside the OS’s file system and editing the files? The latest update of Oracle analytics cloud offers a comprehensive capability to configure system settings easily through a user interface. where  users can alter configuration and restart services through the click of a button.

To access this new capability, from the DV home page, click on the burger icon and navigate to Console. Under Console, navigate to Service Administration. Clicking on Configure System Settings will open a new page where parameters are available for modification. Below is a screen shot of the new screen

To edit the parameters, one must double click on the value and a text box appears where user types the appropriate value. As soon as the value is changed, a call out appears next to the fields indicating that the value has been updated and a restart is required. There is a Restart button on the top right corner which can be leveraged to bounce the services for the parameter to take effect.

Below is a digest of some of the config parameters that can be modified via this interface in the Jan 2019 update of OAC.

Default Scrolling Enabled

This parameter specifies the data view for tabular, pivot, trellis views in BI dashboard. By setting this to true, it sets reports to show the output with Data View as 'Fixed headers with scrolling content'

If the parameter is set to false, it sets reports to show the Data View as 'Content Paging'.

Dashboard Prompt Parameters

Show Null Value when column is Nullable

Have you ever been troubled by the ever-present NULL in your dashboard prompts? Have you ever wondered how to get rid of that NULL value from the prompt? Well, here is the answer. Set the parameter to these values and expect the changes in behavior

always — Always shows the term "NULL" above the column separator in the drop-down list

never — Never shows the term "NULL" in the drop-down list.

asDataValue — Displays as a data value in the drop-down list, not as the term "NULL" above the separator in the drop-down list.

Dashboard Prompt Auto Complete.

Have you ever thought if you can make your dashboard work like google search engine which provides auto complete suggestions? If yes, then it is possible by turning on the parameter “Support Auto Complete” to true.

If you set Support Auto Complete to true, then the “Prompt Auto Complete” option appears under My Account. The same would appear under Dashboard settings as well

                       

In addition to auto complete, here are 2 more additional parameters you can play with for more options.

Case Insensitive Auto Complete: (Default: True)

Specifies whether the auto-complete functionality is case-insensitive. If set to true, case is not considered when a user enters a prompt value such as "Oracle" or "oracle." If set to false, case is considered when a user enters a prompt value, so the user must enter "Oracle" and not "oracle" to find the Oracle record. The system recommends the value with the proper case.

Matching Level: (Default: MatchAll)

Specifies whether the auto-complete functionality uses matching to find the prompt value that the user enters in the prompt field. These settings do not apply when the user accesses the Search dialog to locate and specify a prompt value.

                StartsWith — Searches for a match that begins with the text that the user types

                WordStartsWith — Searches for a match at the beginning of a word or group of words

                MatchAll — Searches for any match within the word or words.

In the below screenshot you can see that I have a Product Name prompt and I have typed “St” and it is being searched for every occurrence in the prompt field

Time zone parameters.

Have you ever wanted to have the date time columns in your report in your preferred time zone? If yes, then there are parameters mentioned below controls the display of time zones.

Default Data Offset Time zone (Default: None):

The time zone offset of the original data. To enable the time zone to be converted so that users see the appropriate zone, you must set the value of this element or variable. If you do not set this option, then no time zone conversion occurs because the value is "unknown". An offset that indicates the number of hours away from GMT time.

For example: "GMT-05:00" or "-300", which means minus 5 hours.

Default User Preferred Time zone:

Specifies the users' default preferred time zone before they select their own in the My Account dialog. Setting the value here will affect the default time zone under my account in BI answers and dashboards.
For example: (GMT -02:00) Cairo

Setting Currency preferences

With the new user interface, currency settings can be managed in Oracle analytics cloud by uploading the currencies.xml and userPrefcurrencies.xml, which earlier had to be saved in the file system. Double click under the property value of the respective parameter to enter edit mode.

Upload the appropriate xml files to currencies.xml and user currency preferences.xml to obtain the desired currency functionality.

In OAC, currency settings are similar to the way it is done in on-premise OBIEE. Please refer to the documentation link for more details.

https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12213/biee/BIESG/GUID-669E8057-A76C-4F75-B29F-EF4A6F92B9E6.htm#BIESG1708

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