Column Heading to be displayed for facts on Pivot table

Yogita Mirji

Hi,

I am trying to get column headers for facts on Pivot table but cannot find a way to do it. I do not want to use unions as I have over 50 reports and excluding the drill down reports and that might cause the server to crash. Can anyone help?

I need to have the formatting as in the Table view to the Pivot table view.

If that is not possible, I need to have a formatting on the Grand Totals in the Table View like that in the Pivot table view

Robert Angel

Turning your requirement on its head, what are you doing in a pivot table that you cannot achieve in a table for this?

Yogita Mirji

Robert, I didn't get you correctly but what I am trying to achieve is formatting on either the table view or pivot table view. I need to see the report as below, doesn't matter in which view.

Robert Angel

Hi,

OBIEE is not excel. It is not now. It is not meant to be. And I pray it will never become, excel.

If the bottom line is that you really need it to be excel then use Smart View, get your figures in the broad presentation and then use something like visual basic to dress up the rest.

If you really need true reports, then I suspect BI Publisher is your better option for this.

If, however, you are set on making this in OBIEE then; -

1. There is the javascript option, of which I cannot guide you but there are resources on the web

2. You can write html in the headings, and might not get exactly the presentation you are after, but could probably make a reasonable proximity thereof

3. You could create dummy values using your headings as the titles, using some kind of case statement to provide a grouping

4. You could set your column widths as fixed (make sure to make it the width of the maximum numbers you will get therein, or it will expand!) and use a text area above it in a compound layout to put your headings in, removing boarders etc to make it as seamless as possible

5. You could persuade your end users that the extra work to get the headings in is not worth the added value

Hope this helps and sorry for the delay in replying.

Thomas Dodds

There is absolutely no analytical value in the color scheme presented ... in fact it deters from anything else you've ever colored green (for good) ... @Robert Angel is correct -- this isn't the intent or proper use of the tool. I also support the suggestion of using BI Publisher and you can 'host' that report on your dashboard ... BIP offers much more in the way of formatting (and is more restrictive on the analytics part; it's a different tool)

Yogita Mirji

Thanks Robert! I agree OBIEE cannot be excel and should never be. I just created the prototype in excel of what I need in OBIEE. I have tried several ways but that didn't help. I am not putting in more efforts by coding the html tags to get the view. Appreciate your help.

Yogita Mirji

Thank you Thomas for your added input. We are concentrating more on the reports rather than the conditional formatting.

Robert Angel

It always amazes me when end users heavily invest in a new BI tool, just to then want it to deliver exactly what they always had.

Progress is not buying a plane and driving it down the motorway because that is the way you always went... I know it is an uphill struggle sometimes to re-educate an end user base, but it a fight worth having.

Over 80% of typical finance reports are noise, detracting from the message.

Better is to leverage exception reporting and drill down functionality, so the users can clearly receive the headlines and perform further analysis where necessary.

Thomas Dodds

This is the issue with 'mock ups' in excel ... I arrived at a client once and they handed me an excel workbook with tabs for all of their 'mock ups' ... no true vetting of any requirement in the destination tool! 

Rather spend the time getting the information model right, then you can BUILD the visualizations live with the end user ... it's iterative, but there's a lot less chance for huge misses and failures.

Robert Angel

I agree, I am not the biggest fan of Agile, but the model, feedback and refine loop does work well in BI circles, and does result in the client understanding the potential benefits and costs of OBIEE, rather than just giving you a long list of 'this is what we have always done'.

Thomas Dodds

I'm a hybrid guy ... there are some parts of the discipline that go 'waterfalling' to success ... there are other parts however where the iterative and keeping in mind the Minimum Viable Product at the forefront do wonders!