As promised to Chetan... I stumbled across a frustrating incompatibility whilst installing OBI EE 10.1.3.3.3 on a Windows machine earlier.
OBI EE requires Version 2 of MS .NET Framework.
During OBI EE installation, it also launches the installer for Microsoft .NET Framework V2.
However, if you already have a later version of .NET Framework loaded, the .NET Framework install will end with an 'Incompatibility' error.
The OBI EE installation completes successfully.
However, it fails to deploy the analytics application to the OC4J instance correctly.
My workaround was to deinstall the later .NET Framework from the machine and then, restart the OBI EE installation process.
Let me know if you have a better solution!
Wednesday 30 July 2008
Friday 25 July 2008
Who Am I? An investigation into R12 UMX Proxy User functionality : Part 1
Just back from a short vacation and I learnt an important lesson.
My tent is NOT waterproof.
Not the best thing to find out at 2.30am on a dark, wet and cold night in the middle of a Farmers field in the English countryside!
A different post from me today.
On my current project, we've been struggling with the requirement to allow Administrators and other Users to perform the functions of another User without knowing their password e.g. submit and review reports, approve documents, perform iprocurement transactions and so on.
My friends at Solution Beacon turned me on to the new R12 User Management (UMX) Proxy User functionality to allow a user to sign on to the E-Business suite and assume ALL the responsibilities of another User WITHOUT knowing their password.
Turns out that this functionality is a perfect fit.... or so we thought!
In this post, I'll walk through the steps to set up the UMX Proxy User functionality. In my next post, I'll discuss the biggest stumbling blocks: auditing and control.
Steps to setup R12 User Management Proxy User Functionality:
Setting up this functionality is actually very simple. To illustrate, I'll refer to two types of E-Business suite Users:
1) MANAGER - this is the User who will delegate responsibility to perform transactions on their behalf to the Administrator user. In my examples, this user name is KWOODROW1.
2) ADMINISTRATOR - this is the user who will sign on to the E-Business suite and assume the responsibilities of the Manager user. In my examples, this user name is JSMITH.
Step 1
- Connect to the R12 E-Business Suite as ANY User (e.g. SYSADMIN) with the responsibility 'User Management' and open the 'Users' form.
- Search for the user name of the MANAGER. In this case, the user name is KWOODROW1.
- Assign the role 'Manage Proxies' to this user name e.g.
Step 2
Now connect as the MANAGER user e.g. KWOODROW1 and navigate to the 'Preferences' form:
Click on the 'Manage Proxies' option and then, the 'Add People' button.
This will allow you to add the User Names of those Users that you wish to perform actions on your behalf:
Step 3
Now, add the user names of all Users that you wish to assume your responsibilities.
In my example, I add the user name of my ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:
Apply the changes and exit the E-Business suite.
Step 4
OK - now comes the fun stuff.
Connect as the ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:
Note - the new options 'Switch User' and 'Return to Self' available:
As its name suggest 'Switch User' is the magic button that allows you to 'become' the other User without having to enter their password i.e. JSMITH can become KWOODROW1 and access their responsibility list.
Step 5
Select the 'People Icon' to switch your user to that of KWOODROW1:
Step 6
As if by magic, you are navigated to the home page of the proxied user, can access any of their current responsibilities and can perform action on their behalf in the E-Business that they themself are allowed to perform:
Note - the label 'Logged in As JSMITH Proxy For KWOODROW1':
Step 7
OK - to return to the original user session, select the option 'Return to Self'
That's all there is to it! Powerful functionality - but very simple to set up.
In my next post, I'll look at the Auditing and control options available for this new functionality.
My tent is NOT waterproof.
Not the best thing to find out at 2.30am on a dark, wet and cold night in the middle of a Farmers field in the English countryside!
A different post from me today.
On my current project, we've been struggling with the requirement to allow Administrators and other Users to perform the functions of another User without knowing their password e.g. submit and review reports, approve documents, perform iprocurement transactions and so on.
My friends at Solution Beacon turned me on to the new R12 User Management (UMX) Proxy User functionality to allow a user to sign on to the E-Business suite and assume ALL the responsibilities of another User WITHOUT knowing their password.
Turns out that this functionality is a perfect fit.... or so we thought!
In this post, I'll walk through the steps to set up the UMX Proxy User functionality. In my next post, I'll discuss the biggest stumbling blocks: auditing and control.
Steps to setup R12 User Management Proxy User Functionality:
Setting up this functionality is actually very simple. To illustrate, I'll refer to two types of E-Business suite Users:
1) MANAGER - this is the User who will delegate responsibility to perform transactions on their behalf to the Administrator user. In my examples, this user name is KWOODROW1.
2) ADMINISTRATOR - this is the user who will sign on to the E-Business suite and assume the responsibilities of the Manager user. In my examples, this user name is JSMITH.
Step 1
- Connect to the R12 E-Business Suite as ANY User (e.g. SYSADMIN) with the responsibility 'User Management' and open the 'Users' form.
- Search for the user name of the MANAGER. In this case, the user name is KWOODROW1.
- Assign the role 'Manage Proxies' to this user name e.g.
Step 2
Now connect as the MANAGER user e.g. KWOODROW1 and navigate to the 'Preferences' form:
Click on the 'Manage Proxies' option and then, the 'Add People' button.
This will allow you to add the User Names of those Users that you wish to perform actions on your behalf:
Step 3
Now, add the user names of all Users that you wish to assume your responsibilities.
In my example, I add the user name of my ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:
Apply the changes and exit the E-Business suite.
Step 4
OK - now comes the fun stuff.
Connect as the ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:
Note - the new options 'Switch User' and 'Return to Self' available:
As its name suggest 'Switch User' is the magic button that allows you to 'become' the other User without having to enter their password i.e. JSMITH can become KWOODROW1 and access their responsibility list.
Step 5
Select the 'People Icon' to switch your user to that of KWOODROW1:
Step 6
As if by magic, you are navigated to the home page of the proxied user, can access any of their current responsibilities and can perform action on their behalf in the E-Business that they themself are allowed to perform:
Note - the label 'Logged in As JSMITH Proxy For KWOODROW1':
Step 7
OK - to return to the original user session, select the option 'Return to Self'
That's all there is to it! Powerful functionality - but very simple to set up.
In my next post, I'll look at the Auditing and control options available for this new functionality.
Tuesday 8 July 2008
BIP XSL-TEXT Templates : Part 2
Not much changes in Birmingham.
It seems like an eternity ago that I was at university there - but after only a couple of hours and a fine Balti in a BYOB restaurant, I felt like I'd never left.
Anyway, enough of my weekend! Let's get back to XSL-TEXT templates.
Excluding XSL-FO, there are 3 different types of XSLT script templates available in BI Publisher. These are currently not greatly documented in the BIP User Guide. However, the difference between them is the format of the output created by the XSLT script i.e.:
Note: The XSL element used to set the output type is:
Generally, it is a lot simpler to use an RTF or eText template to create the report layout - and I would ALWAYS recommend using an RTF or eText template where possible for this reason.
However, there comes a time when it may be easier to write XSL and XPATH directly rather than live with any shortcomings of the RTF or eText template type.
One such example of this is to add blank lines and additional formatting logic into eText templates.
In a previous blog on R12 Payments and eText templates, I built the following text file using an eText template:
Here is a XSL-TEXT template to build the same text file using the same R12 Payments XML data source:
A simple XSLT example... however, the point is that I can reference any XSL element, XPATH or extended SQL function directly. I have complete control over the layout of the text file being created.
Here are the source files:
Sample XML Data File
XSL-TEXT template
I built and tested this example using the BIP Enterprise Server (but this works equally well from Oracle E-Business Suite.)
To test this example using the BIP Server:
1) Create a new report and register the XML file as a data source:
2) Upload the XSL-TEXT layout template:
3) View the final transformed output:
It seems like an eternity ago that I was at university there - but after only a couple of hours and a fine Balti in a BYOB restaurant, I felt like I'd never left.
Anyway, enough of my weekend! Let's get back to XSL-TEXT templates.
Excluding XSL-FO, there are 3 different types of XSLT script templates available in BI Publisher. These are currently not greatly documented in the BIP User Guide. However, the difference between them is the format of the output created by the XSLT script i.e.:
| XSL-HTML | A XSLT script to transform an XML document into a HTML file |
| XSL-XML | A XSLT script to transform an XML document into another XML document |
| XSL-TEXT | A XSLT script to transform an XML document into a TEXT file |
Note: The XSL element used to set the output type is:
Generally, it is a lot simpler to use an RTF or eText template to create the report layout - and I would ALWAYS recommend using an RTF or eText template where possible for this reason.
However, there comes a time when it may be easier to write XSL and XPATH directly rather than live with any shortcomings of the RTF or eText template type.
One such example of this is to add blank lines and additional formatting logic into eText templates.
In a previous blog on R12 Payments and eText templates, I built the following text file using an eText template:
Here is a XSL-TEXT template to build the same text file using the same R12 Payments XML data source:
A simple XSLT example... however, the point is that I can reference any XSL element, XPATH or extended SQL function directly. I have complete control over the layout of the text file being created.
Here are the source files:
Sample XML Data File
XSL-TEXT template
I built and tested this example using the BIP Enterprise Server (but this works equally well from Oracle E-Business Suite.)
To test this example using the BIP Server:
1) Create a new report and register the XML file as a data source:
2) Upload the XSL-TEXT layout template:
3) View the final transformed output:
Friday 4 July 2008
BIP XSL-TEXT Templates : Part 1
Just a quick one from me today as I am of to sunny Birmingham for the weekend.
I've blogged a lot recently about ETEXT Templates and how they are used in BI Publisher to generate text files for EDI and EFT:
ETEXT Part 1
ETEXT templates are a great way of creating simple fixed or delimited text files and the Oracle Payments team have delivered loads of predefined ETEXT templates for Payments processing.
However, they are not the only way to generate text files from BI Publisher!
It is also worth considering XSL-TEXT templates.
I've found that XSL-TEXT templates are really just XSLT scripts that transform the XML into text output only.
Note:
xsl:text is actually an element or command of XSLT to write literal text strings, entity references and #PCDATA to the output file.
If you are scratching your head over what XSLT is... then, a great reference to get you up and running quickly is the W3schools tutorial.
In my next post, I'll walk through some examples of XSL-TEXT templates - but first, I have to go and join the queues of traffic trying to leave London. No fun at 5pm on a Friday night!
I've blogged a lot recently about ETEXT Templates and how they are used in BI Publisher to generate text files for EDI and EFT:
ETEXT Part 1
ETEXT templates are a great way of creating simple fixed or delimited text files and the Oracle Payments team have delivered loads of predefined ETEXT templates for Payments processing.
However, they are not the only way to generate text files from BI Publisher!
It is also worth considering XSL-TEXT templates.
I've found that XSL-TEXT templates are really just XSLT scripts that transform the XML into text output only.
Note:
xsl:text is actually an element or command of XSLT to write literal text strings, entity references and #PCDATA to the output file.
If you are scratching your head over what XSLT is... then, a great reference to get you up and running quickly is the W3schools tutorial.
In my next post, I'll walk through some examples of XSL-TEXT templates - but first, I have to go and join the queues of traffic trying to leave London. No fun at 5pm on a Friday night!
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