by Gil Rodriguez
In WebFOCUS 7.6.9, Information Builders introduced a few dashboard enhancements as part of our ongoing efforts to make many of the Managed Reporting Domain Builder components and capabilities available from the Business Intelligence Dashboard.
Many of the capabilities in Domain Builder are now available by default in Dashboard, and that includes creating reports, creating standard report folders and subfolders, moving or copying reports, and viewing and updating standard report properties. Prior to this release, administrators were required to manually edit the global setting enableExtendedMenu in the bid-config.xml file or configure each view via the Edit Settings feature in View Builder to allow administrators and developers the ability to create Standard Reports. In 7.6.9, this is now enabled by default.
In addition to this enhancement, we have made others that we hope will make your life easier.
Creating Reporting Objects from Dashboard
Another enhancement is that the Dashboard now gives administrators and developers the ability to create reporting objects (See Screen 1). Reporting objects are representations of data sources, which present the available data using terms and formats that are meaningful to users.
Screen 1
Using these predefined reporting objects, Dashboard users can build and save their own reports utilizing the Report Assistant, Graph Assistant, Power Painter and InfoAssist tools without having to know the details and complexities of the underlying reporting language and data sources. If you check “Use InfoAssist to create components” upon creation of the reporting object, InfoAssist will be the only reporting tool available from the right-click menu to open this object in the Business Intelligence Dashboard.
For more information, see the “Creating Reporting Objects” section in Chapter 3 of our Managed Reporting Developers manual.
Hiding Domains
Content such as links and reports can be made available via Dashboard content blocks without having to show the domain in the Domain Tree. Administrators and developers can store contents that are targeted for specific groups in a “common” domain without having to give those groups direct access to the domain. Of course, the common domain has to be part of each group. Administrators and developers can now control when to hide or make an entire domain available to end-users.
In Screen 2, we illustrate the new property called “Do not show on User’s list,” which is available to administrators and developers via the domain’s tab in the Managed Reporting Administration interface or at the domain level in Dashboard (Screen 3). By default, the property is unselected. If selected, the domain is not displayed to end-users in the domain tree or tree block. However, links and reports can be accessed from the Launch, List, Folder and Output blocks if made available by the Business Intelligence Dashboard View Builder Administrator.
Screen 2
Screen 3
Note: This feature is only applicable to Dashboard and not the Managed Reporting (Applet) Interface.
For more information, see the Managed Reporting Administration manual.
