Dashboards, Applications & Business Intelligence

In this article we will discuss how to enable Discoverer reports to be viewed through Oracle Applications Menu structure.

We will take an example report say “AR - Invoice Aging Buckets” with developer key “AR_INV_AGING_REPORT”

Let us assume there is a seperate responsibility to view AR reports such as “Accounts Receivables Reports”. We also assume that there is a menu (top level) called “ALL_AR_REPORTS” which is attached to this responsibility using the Define Responsibility form.

Using the Discoverer User tool we share the “AR - Invoice Aging Buckets” to “Accounts Recievables Reports” responsibility.

Now we will begin creating the Function and menus for this workbook.

• Navigate > System Administrator > Application > Function

• Go to the Description TAB
• Enter Function Name = AR_INV_AGING_REPORT_DWB
• Enter User Function Name = AR - Invoice Aging Buckets
• Enter Description = AR - Invoice Aging Buckets

We appended a suffix of “_DWB” at the end of the function name to indicate this is a Discoverer Workbook function. You may choose any other name for your function but it is a good idea to keep the function name same as the developer key for easy identification and tracking.

• Now Go to the Properties TAB
• Select Type = SSWA plsql function that opens a new window (Kiosk Mode)
• Maintenance Mode Support = NoneContext Dependence = Responsibility

Selecting the Kiosk Mode opens the Discoverer workbook in a new window.

• Now Go to Form TAB
• Enter Parameters => “workbook=AR_INV_AGING_REPORT&viewer=Y”

In the above we entered the workbook developer key and forcing the report to be opened using Discoverer Viewer. (If your ICX profile is set to use Discoverer Viewer then you may omit the part from “&” )

• Now Go to Web HTML TAB
• Enter HTML Call = OracleOASIS.RunDiscoverer and then Click on the Save Button

Now that we have created our Form Function we will create a new menu to hold this function and then attach this new menu to the “ALL_AR_REPORTS” menu.

Navigate > System Administrator > Application > Menus

Create a new menu “Aging reports”

Then attach the function to this menu

Now query the main menu “ALL_AR_REPORTS”

and add submenu to this main menu

Now we have finally linked all the pieces together. Wait a minute, just ensure that the user who needs to access this report is given the “Accounts Receivables Reports” responsibility. So when user “ARUSER” logs onto Self service signon, the user will see the “Accounts Receivables Reports” responsibility as part of the menu list. Clicking on this responsibility, the user will see the “Aging Reports” as one of the sub-menu and underneath there will be the link to the discoverer workbook. If “all is fine”, clicking on the report link will launch a seperate window where user can enter parameter values and execute the report.

NOTE: If the menu changes does not appear as expected then ask your DBA’s to bounce the Apache middle tier. Also, make sure all the Discoverer profile values are set properly.

Have a nice day!