30/06/2010 by Matt Stocker.

The Oracle Government User Group was held last month (13 May 2010) and we were privileged to be invited to share both the exciting potential of BI Publisher and the ways in which it can transform an organisation’s reporting capabilities. With good overall attendance, it was great see some familiar faces as well as meet some of those who were attending for the first time.

In case you haven’t attended an Oracle User Group before, these groups are run by Oracle users for the benefit of other users and cover topics ranging from the upgrade path to R12 to the specifics of certain functionality such as reporting – which is where BeLife comes in.

For this particular presentation, Simon Tomey (Consulting Director) and Adam Penchoen (Consultant) focused on the specifics of creating a BI Publisher report. Whilst there are some technical elements, it is entirely feasible for a non-technical user to get to grips with the process as it involves use of standard Microsoft Office functionality.  Due to this, use of BI Publisher enables organisations to be much less reliant on technical experts, which in turn leads to internal empowerment, improved reporting capabilities and reduced investment costs.

As you can probably tell, BI Publisher and its capabilities excite us and it was great to see that others were excited too. Those who attended our presentation were, in the main, interested in the free capabilities that BI Publisher offers and were either looking at or were already using it to replace Discoverer, FSG or other third party reporting applications.

Whilst BI Publisher can tend to be a lesser-known capability within EBS, it certainly seems that awareness of it is growing. With BI Publisher’s key role within the Oracle EBS R12 release and, beyond that, the Oracle Fusion upgrade, it would seem that its importance is only set to grow.

Many of those attending our presentation also reported that there are many advantages to BI Publisher when compared to other options. In fact, our presentation followed a presentation by George Gallagher (Jephson Housing Association Group and one of our clients), who shared his experience of converting to BI Publisher. He explained that BI Publisher had reduced reports users’ reliance on himself, as users were able to run reports themselves once they had been created or, in some cases, reports could be run automatically through bursting.

If you’re interested in finding out more about implementing BI Publisher yourself, feel free to get in touch and we’d be more than happy to talk you through what’s involved.

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07/06/2010 by Simon Tomey.

There’s great news for FSG users and Discoverer users – you can emulate the functionality of these packages using BI Publisher.  Not only does this mean you get great output, but you apply some of the cool BIP functionality too (such as “bursting”).

Following on from an earlier presentation at the UKOUG (where I think I rather missed the point) I recently did a fresh presentation at the UKOUG on converting FSG’s and Discoverer reports to run in Oracle BI Publisher.  Loads of people ask me if it is possible to convert FSG’s and discoverer reports to run in BIP.  Well you can, sort of, using data templates.  Read on… 

Not only can Oracle BI Publisher transform existing reports to produce impressive attractive output, but you can write completely new reports too.  Data templates are part of BI Publisher and enable to extract anything at all out of Oracle applications by writing your own SQL and presenting the output as a BI Publisher report.  In BI Publisher, you can include your own parameters and can apply some of the more interesting BIP technology such as bursting reports to email overnight.

One particularly compelling solution is the replace some of your dull routine FSG or Discoverer reports with impressive BI Publisher output (PDF, Excel, HTML, RTF).  You’ve got the SQL already, you just have to lift it into your data template.

We’ve recently converted FSG reports into burstable PDFs or spreadsheets with run time parameters for one client.   For other client’s we’ve replaced routine discoverer reports with attractively formatted impressive scheduled BIP reports. 

Click here to download the presentation and let me know if you’ve got any questions http://oracle.belife.co.uk/UKOUG%20-%20Transforming%20Discoverer%20and%20FSG%20Report%20v1.0.zip

The presentation focuses on data templates and what can be done rather than exactly how it is done.   (Warning BIP is not well suited to ad hoc queries).  If you want to read about data templates in general, you might also like to check out an earlier post of mine (http://blog.belife.co.uk/2009/08/03/data-templates/).

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09/01/2010 by Simon Tomey.

We understand the requirement to be to get this cake into your tummy …but don’t worry we have a 30 second window and team of consultants on hand who are equipped with installation accelerators.

I attended another great conference at the UKOUG in December this year. It was good to catch up with some old friends, make new acquaintances and learn more. My contribution to the presentations this year was “BI Publisher and a Reporting Roadmap”. You can get the slides here http://www.oracle.belife.co.uk/BeLife%20-%20BI%20and%20the%20Reporting%20Road%20Map%20v1.0%20pps.zip

The presentation was initiated by what seemed to be a universal view that sponsoring and implementing some BI projects was a bit like convincing your FD to eat a Christmas cake whole in 30 seconds flat (and pay several hundred thousand pounds for the privilege). I think that you can implement great Oracle BI one slice at a time – starting with the EBS free and integrated functionality found in BI Publisher and progressing piecemeal to the powerful and impressive OBIEE. Here’s what I think are characteristics of a good BI roadmap:

• Benefits
  You can get benefits whenever you stop. You don’t have to continue to the bitter end, if you’ve taken a wrong turn.
• Low Risk & Cost
  Pleasant surprises only. Minimise risk and cost.
• You’re in Control
  Get consultants to advise you and transfer the knowledge so that you are in control of the project & the technology and can combine it with your deep business knowledge and expertise.
• Supported & Sustainable
  Ensure the components are Oracle compatible and on future roadmap.

We are introducing a “BI Publisher template library” as an excellent way to kick start the implementation of the rich and useful functionality in BI Publisher. See http://www.BIPTemplates.com for more details.

Check out the presentation and tell me what you think.

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