Sales Cloud Analytics: Getting Started with OTBI - Part III

Get insights into ‘How to add user-facing Prompts to your Analysis’. These clear tips and tricks will help you create some interesting and useful reports.

An introduction #

This series of blog posts give an insight into some of the most commonly used features in Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) for Oracle Sales Cloud. OTBI is an incredibly powerful tool which you can use to visualise the data in your database – with the ability to create interactive tables and graphs to display information to your end users. Knowing where to start in OTBI however can be difficult, so the purpose of this series is to alleviate those difficulties and to help get you started in OTBI by covering a few simple tasks.

Please see below how to stay updated on this series of blog posts:

• Part I: Choosing which Subject Area to use in an Analysis
• Part II: How to refine your Analysis with filters

Boxfusion Consulting are an Oracle Platinum Partner and recognised by Oracle as Specialised in the implementation of Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle BI. If you would like to hear more about how Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle BI might be used to help your business, or where Boxfusion can help you gain more intelligence from your data, please give use a call on +44 203 283 4315 or contact us here.

How to add user-facing Prompts to your Analysis #

‘How to add user-facing Prompts to your Analysis’ is the third blog post in our ‘Getting Started with OTBI’ series and this post seeks to provide Oracle Sales Cloud users with a further hands-on guide to help get the most from the application. Armed with some of these tips and tricks you should be well on your way to creating some really interesting and useful reports.

The first method sees the user supply a set of values at run-time, just before the Analysis renders. The second method provides an instantaneously adjustable filter which you can apply to the report.

Column Prompts #

Create a simple Analysis with a variety of columns, including the column for which you would like to create the prompt on.

Click the Prompts tab. Click the New button, select Column Prompt and then choose the column you wish to filter on (in our example Status Name).

In the pop-up that appears you will be given the choice of the operator to use in the filter, the method for user input and other additional options. Here you can choose whether to use a choice list or a text field, whether to restrict the selectable values and more.

We choose an Operator of is equal to and User Input of Check Boxes, then click OK.

Click the Preview button. The pop-up that appears will list all the values of the column you wish to filter on, with the ability to tick those that you wish to see. In our example we wish to see only Opportunities with a Status of Open, so we tick Open, then click OK.

The report now displays only rows which correspond to the values you just ticked. In order to change the filter you will have to close and re-open the report.

Table Prompts #

Recreate the same unfiltered Analysis initially created (as seen in Figure 1). Under the results tab, click to Edit View of the table.

Now, drag and drop the column you wish to filter on into the Table Prompts section. In our example we used Status Name.

You will now see a drop-down box above your table – this is the prompt, and from here you can select what you’d like to view. In our example this means the prompt asks whether we wish to view Opportunities with a status of Lost, No Sale, Open or Won.

Both methods (Column prompts and Table prompts) have their advantages and disadvantages. Column Prompts are more flexible in the ability to select multiple values at once when viewing the Analysis, however if a user wanted to change their filter, they would need to close and then re-open the Analysis once more. Table Prompts have the opposite problems – only one value can be selected at a time, however the filter can be instantaneously changed without having to re-open the report.

Fortunately, there are ways in which to extend the functionality of Table Prompts...

Extending Table Prompts #

Firstly, an All Values option can be added to the list of values in the prompt, allowing the user to see the Analysis unfiltered. To add this, return to the Layout view (as seen in figure 7), click the Totals button and then click Before to add the option as the first value in the LOV, or click After to add as the last value in the LOV. In our example we chose Before, and in the preview pane above, you can clearly see the prompt populated with the additional value of All Values.

In our example we chose Before, and in the preview pane above, you can clearly see the prompt populated with the additional value of All Values.

Secondly, you can create custom groupings of values on which to filter. For example you could create a NOT Won value, which if selected in the prompt would display all records with a Status Name of Lost, No Sale or Open.

In order to achieve this, extend the Selection Steps pane at the very bottom of the page. In the drop-down list beside List: select the column you wish to filter on – in our example we select Status Name.

Next, click 2. Then, New Step..., followed by Add Groups or Calculated Items, then New Group.

In the pop-up that appears, you have the ability to create a group of values. The Display Label defines the name of the grouping, and to assign values to the grouping you must transfer them from the Available section to Selected. When finished, click OK.

In our example we define the Display Label as NOT Won, and add Lost, No Sale and Open to the Selected section.

Now in the prompt, we see NOT Won as an option at the bottom of the LOV, and selecting it filters the table accordingly.

A method similar to this could easily be implemented to create groupings to cluster together records from a certain set of countries that the user oversees, or perhaps a set of products that the user sells. It should be said though, that the administrator/BI user must create these groupings in advance – Sales Reps and Sales Managers will not have the permissions to edit their reports.

Nonetheless, this is a powerful tool and if used correctly can really improve the usability of embedded Analytics for Oracle Sales Cloud users. Giving Sales Reps and Managers greater control of what they see in embedded Analytics will not only increase the influence of Analytics on their decision-making but should also see them more frequently use Analytics due to their simplicity.

Look out for the next post in this series, where we will look into how to add conditional formatting to your analyses. Adding conditional formatting allows you to highlight key information and gives your reports an added visual dimension - making it easier for you and your end users to interpret your data.

Ask the Experts #

If you would like to hear more about how Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle BI might be used to help your business, or where Boxfusion can help you gain more intelligence from your data, please give use a call on +44 203 283 4315 or contact us here.