How we can find a list of all reports which are not being used by end users in OAC?

User_LYZND

How we can find a list of all reports which are not being used by end users in OAC?

We’ll need this information multiple times during the OAC Migration and it’s not viable to check it manually every time.

We are expecting the reports names list which are hidden/not on dashboard level in OAC release.

Marcelo Finkielsztein

In OAC, you can download a snapshot, expand it and obtain a list of all catalog objects (analyses, dashboards, prompts, etc). From the expanded catalog you can obtain the object name and its location.

You can compare that full list against your results from querying the Usage Tracking tables. Note that your UT tables will contain only the last "n" months of data, depending on your configuration. e.g. if you keep only the last 3 months, then you will be reporting all objects that were not used in the last 3 months and so.

For a list of analyses that are not included in any dashboard, you can visit the definition of each dashboard in the expanded catalog.  Each dashboard will be a folder, and each dashboard page will be a file, named like the dashboard page and without extension. (I usually rename them from *. to *.xml, because these files in fact contain XML data).

Each dashboard page file will contain an XML definition of the dashboard page. The xml is identified with a <sawd:dashboardPage> xml element.

Inside the dashboardPage xml element, you will see dashboardColumns and dashboardSections. Inside the dashboardSection XML-element you will see a "<sawd:reportRef>" xml-element pointing at the analysis that is exposed by the dashboard. This xml-element will contain a "path" attribute, with the exact location of the analysis.

if you have the resources to write code that reads and analyzes XML files, it should be possible to automate this task and fulfill your requirements.

Good luck and Happy Coding.

Marcelo Finkielsztein

Michal Zima

@User_LYZND Answer to your question is very simple: nowhere. This area (meaning DV/analytics governance) is apparently not within top priorities of Analytics Product Mgmt (as opposed to other areas like augmented analytics for example).

If you are on OAS (thus you have control over the infrastructure of "components" of your OAS deployment and you can look a little bit "under the hood") you can create such report by yourself :

Leveraging data from Usage Tracking (table in BIPLATFORM schema) and objects (their metadata) in BI catalog (you can again, find them in tables in BIPLATFORM schema or you can "extract" them using Catalog Manager client sw). This is the solution we have built (as OAS customer by our self) to fill the gap in product. Unfortunately (since we don't use "official" method/API - which are either unavailable or very poor), our custom solution cannot be shared (to answer forward your potential question: Can you share this solution ?).

Marcelo Finkielsztein

Hello User_LYZD,

1. Deeply agree with Michal's answer. He is right on the money, as usual !!! : )
2. WIth OAC, we lost the ability to query the catalog using Catalog Manager. Sad, and I wish Oracle would fix it.
3. as a workaround ... Using the OAC console, you can take a "Snapshot" that includes "everything", then download it, then expand it. This will give you a folder tree that contains (among others) a folder called "content\catalog\root" that will have two subfolders: "shared" and "users".
4. Under shared you will see one file per catalog object with a file name that is the same as the name of the object (analysis, agent, etc) and no extension.
5. Note that the file name will be encoded. spaces are "+", a "<" in the object name will be a %3c, and so. Oracle seems to follow the same encoding rules used to encode URLs; you will figure out.
6. From this list of files, you will obtain the full list of analyses, agents, dashboards, prompts, etc.
7. From the Usage Tracking tables you can obtain the last run date. Be aware the Usage Tracking tables are purged and you need to configure how many days you want to keep before they are gone. You will only be able to report objects that were used in the last "n" months. Other objects will look like they have 'never' been used. Adn that needs to be interpreted as "never or were used more than n months ago".

Hope this helps? good luck.

Marcelo Finkielsztein

Michal Zima

@Marcelo Finkielsztein Good point, Marcelo. Use-case I was describing is a little bit different from what has been originally asked by @User_LYZND and this is: We want to know, which analysis (reports) has not been executed by any user for some period of time (lets say one year - this period is a kind of parametr for report).

But for both cases :

a) show me all analyses , which are not exposed on any dashboard

b) show me all analyses , which has not been executed by any user for some period of time

you need to apply a kind of DIY solution - it is not part of the product "by default".