We are nearing the completion of a project to convert all of our existing internal reports from Cognos to WebFocus. Our internal users currently log into Cognos (SSO with AD) and are presented with a menu structure consisting of folders (and maybe sub-folders). Within those folders are links to WebFOUCS HTML launch pages where users select their parameters and submit to execute the report fex. The HTML pages reside on a WebFocus Client server running under Tomcat and the reports reside on a separate WebFocus Reporting Server. Using Active Directory security groups, we hide or show these report links on the Cognos menu to those groups who require them. The next phase of the project is to relocate these links to some other sort of dashboard/portal, so that we can shutdown Cognos. We do not currently have the WebFocus BI Portal license. I have searched the forum and I am not sure that having that license would give us the option to replicate what we currently have in Cognos. So, after all that ... my question is has anyone done anything similar to this? Basically, creating a "public" page or portal within WebFocus that consists of a folder directory structure with links to HTML parameter launch pages utilizing AD security. Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be appreciated. BTW, I do realize that securing html links is not "real" security, but it is sufficient given our circumstances.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,

quote:

using AD security

The security should be at the domain level and associated app folders (Developers, Advanced User, Basic Users, or Admins). Thus, it would follow thru to the links in the fexes whether they're accessed directly or from within a Portal.

Sounds like you want to use the old dashboard. We still use the Dashboard. Currently we have one dashboard with over 200 reports spread over 16 tabs. Each tab is like a directory folder. The item on the tabs are HTML links to reports related to the tab title. We are still on 8.08. I've been told that the old dashboard is not available in 8.2 but they said the same thing with 8.0 and they were still there. In some of the demos I saw, there is a link on the new portal to the old WebFOCUS interface (which is my current interface). I'm hoping the dashboards are there.

Now for my rant.

We've been using WebFOCUS since release 4.somthing and used FOCUS for HP-UX for years before that. For reports that are not emailed from Report Caster, users access them from the old Dashboards. We don't use the portals, they do nothing for us, kind of like WebFOCUS Security that came out with release 8. Every line of report code resides on the Reporting Server, we have no code on the client server. So far, I have found nothing relevant to what we do that can be done with code stored on the Client Server that can't be done with code stored on the Report Server. Users don't develop reports. We don't use IA and have no plans to start. For us the security that came out in WebFOCUS 8 is worthless. We had already developed our own report security based on the security in the users data input application. Every tab on the dashboard is public and access to a given report is based on our security not WebFOCUS security. User don't log into the dashboard, we are a single sign on shop. To launch the Dashboard, they just click a link on an info net page. Access to the dashboard is granted based AD group membership. Users are auto created in WebFOCUS security. If they are a member of a certain AD group they are placed into a WebFOCUS group. If one doesn't "compute" to that group, one doesn't get access to the dashboard. Once in the dashboard, as I said above, access is granted to specific reports based on the security data in the users data entry application. Our security is automatically maintained. I rarely have to do anything with WebFOCUS Security (I have over 2000 users supported by at most 4 people). Our security not only controls access, it also tracks usage.

We've been told that with 8.2 the Dashboards are no longer there, which sucks if true. Not sure why you would get rid of something that is finally stable and works well. I can understand it if IBI froze the Dashboards with no further development or updating, but to get rid of them and force people into something they don't want or need is kind of dumb. (I remember when they said MODIFY was going away and we'd have to convert all the MODIFY code to MAINTAIN, well MODIFY is still here.) Back to the topic, IBI said the same thing with 8.0 and we are on 8.08 and still use Dashboards. On the other hand, if they are really gone, we've done some preliminary work on a public portal that kinda-sorta looks like the dashboard we currently use. It is not as nice as our current dashboard but we may be forced to use it.

Yeah John, I feel your pain (We've been told that with 8.2 the Dashboards are no longer there, which sucks if true . Not sure why you would get rid of something that is finally stable and works well.).¹

I think the dashboards are here to stay, like MODIFY, which is the basis for DMC ETL.
Portals don't do all that can be accomplished in a dashboard².

Note ¹: We're some of the 80s Crew.
          I think the dashboards will be around, and functional, for a long time, just not supported.
Note ²: I don't know everything, yet, about the new portal creation.

We are on 8.2 and if Dashboards are still available then I don't know where to find them. I understand the reasons behind securing reports at the domain level. Asking our users who currently have a nicely presented, user-friendly menu structure to switch to one that is not the same is a tough sell. I am currently prototyping something at the Domain folder level now. Once I attach AD security to it I will see how much "clutter" in the menu structure I can hide from the users.

Before I semi retired and became the focal point moderator I helped many customers as a systems engineer successfully implement SSO / AD security with WebFOCUS. I know this will probably rile a few of you but if you bite the bullet and create Enterprise Domain folders on the WebFOCUS client and put all your WebFOCUS content under those folders it becomes relatively easy to implement SSO/AD security to those folders. With the proper security settings WebFOCUS allows you to reference AD security groups which means very little maintenance on the WebFOCUS side as employees come and go. Your security administrators assign the users to the appropriate AD security groups and WebFOCUS will autoadd new users as they are defined. There are security experts in the IBI Professional Services organization that can quickly mentor you and set up SSO/AD security. I strongly recommend you at least talk to them about this.

I am sorry to tell you this but as far as using the old dashboards they do no longer exist under WebFOCUS 8.2. The worp directory that was used to define these dashboards on the file system no longer exists. If the need exists I can ask product management to comment on why the dashboards were eliminated from the product but if I recollect a lot of it had to do with security loopholes that existed.

Chuck, we have been an SSO shop since the first day we started using WebFOCUS. Initially with a Windows client but currently all of our WebFOCUS servers are virtual Linux servers on an IBM mainframe. We went to this configuration when we went to WebFOCUS 7. We've been an SSO/AD shop since then. All WebFOCUS 8 security does for us is muddy the waters. In WebFOCUS 7, the only users defined to WebFOCUS were developers, now I have over 2000 users that have been auto added because of how WebFOCUS 8 works. While it will autoadd new users, it won't auto delete users that are no longer here. I would argue that WebFOCUS 8 security created more work, at least for me. Like I said before, by the time WebFOCUS 8 came around we had already developed our own security for our WebFOCUS environment, I don't use and have no plans to use WebFOCUS 8 security.

As for the dashboard, you are saying that if one choses to show the "old" ibi_apps page, under Tools, View Builder is no longer there?

And yes, I would like to hear specifically why dashboards were eliminated. To me a "security loop-hole" is a poor excuse. If there was a security loop-hole, all IBI had to do is let people know about the risk, they didn't have to remove the dashboards. I see posts on here all the time about people still using .xls files instead of .xlsx. That is a risk as well but you still support that as a valid output format.

John

I appologize as I was completely wrong about the security loophole. I was provided this link published in July 2016 documenting discontinued features https://techsupport.informatio...s_consolidation.html

It says that the Business Intelligence Dashboard is replaced by the Business Intelligence Portal to focus development resources on delivering a new modern and flexible BI Portal.