Greetings,

We're coming up in TEST with WebFOCUS 7.6 and the Dashboard enhancements have uncovered some interesting changes, most notably in the LINKS/LOGO behavior. We have group views and limit the links available -- just offer "Logoff|Help" -- for a very canned environment. We've noticed three challenges in 7.6.

1. If the template doesn't use a Logo (two new ones are provided, WORP6 and WORP7), one can't use Viewbuilder to limit the Links, because there's no logo to customize. We've opened a case on that.

2. If a different template is chosen (one with a logo), you can chose the Links for the group view. However, regardless of what you choose, if the user has a sufficiently high role, a "My Reports" link is inserted whether you want it on the top bar or not. Near as I can tell, there is no way to get rid of that on a custom group view, short of modifying BID-CONFIG.XML and hiding it globally for that role.

3. "My Reports" will launch a option box for a custom report. The options presented are Power Painter, Report Asst, Graph Asst, and Editor. We don't have a license for Power Painter, never entered a number in the install, and it doesn't show as option on MRE applet -- yet, it can be launched from the Dashboard "My Reports". It's an interesting tool and all (screen updates act up a little on MacOS Firefox, though), but my concern is our users will spend time toying around with it, and we don't want to be exposing unlicensed features to the general Dashboard user community.

Has anyone else encountered these issues with 7.6 yet?



Dan Kenny
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Prod: WF 7.1.6 Linux Test: WF 7.6.0 Linux

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dan Kenny,

dan, that #3 is an easter egg, not a bug.

I don't have 7.6 so I haven't seen the behaviour you discuss, but why not create your own template based on your requirements? Copy one of the ones that already exist and create a new template folder. You may be able to manipulate the template to have ViewBuilder react like you're expecting it to.

The options in My Reports are probably contained in a JavaScript or JSP file within the dashboard web app and you can probably comment out the options you don't require.

This, of course, requires some knowledge of the Dashboard configuration, make backups!

Cheers,

Dan,

I would definetly recommend you open a case with Tech Support so that they can do some further testing.
If you click on Power Painter under My Reports does it open the tool?
If you click under Standard Reports in Managed Reporting. Does Power Painter come up as an option when creating a new procedure?

Regards,
Mon

Mon - Ok, I opened up a case.

Susannah, I don't want to "look a gift easter-egg in the mouth", but if the option is exposed to the users, then we have to support it. If we have to support it, then we need to be licensed on it. Unless this is just a holiday gift from Information Builders : )

The option does launch power painter, so it would appear that the license check is strictly on the front-end, not within the Reporting Server. Maybe this is just limited to the Linux version, but I suspect that it is across all platforms. The MRE applet does not have power painter as an option, and my license code is blank on the WF Administration Console for Power Painter. Sure looks like a bug to me.

Francis, the problems are also on the custom templates, in addition to the supplied ones. I poked around on the JSPs and BID-CONFIG.XML in order to surpess My Reports and/or Power Painter option. Sure would be nice to have full API documentation on the BID -- I am loathe to blindly hack the JSPs. I can tell they're using SPRING for their Java framework, but my Java skills are not quite up to the level where I can easily traceback the appropriate methods and properties through their config files and JSPs. I haven't yet poked at the Javascript files, but I'd rather just get it fixed from the source, and continue to lobby for more extensive API docs on the BID platform.

Regards,

Dan Kenny
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Prod: WF 7.1.6 Linux Test: WF 7.6.0 Linux

We do have a license code for Power Painter, but I'm still not crazy about the My Report banner link--it seems to bypass other MRE/Dashboard security, such as limiting a user to Reporting Objects in a domain. It may be different for you, but in our environment that "bonus link" shows up if the user has Advanced privileges. Anyone without the Advanced privileges does not see the banner link. We are utilizing the Windows version of 7.6, so yours could behave differently, I guess. On a side note, I do find it peculiar that when you are creating your dashboard view that you have control to include or hide all other banner links, but this one is a wildcard that you can't control in the dashboard view builder.

Windows XP / WebSphere WF 7.6 BI Dashboard/MRE

Jeff,

We opened a case on it back in December, here is the workaround we were given to surpress My Reports. I unpacked the jar-ball and repacked it and it works as instructed, ableit a little messy. We're hoping it's permanently fixed in 7.6.1....

Regards,

Dan Kenny
University of Nebraska at Omaha

-----------
Updated: Jan 9, 2007 10:57 AM
Status/Action: RR/


Support Group: WEB Rep: MONICA VINASCO (MXV)
Severity: 3 - Application Issue

Hi Daniel,

Just wanted to let you know that I was able to reproduce this behavior
in-house. I will be sending this issue to programming as a bug.
Once this is resolved you will be notified by the division.
As a workaround you can do the following in order for you to remove the
My Report link from the bannersection in the dashboard:
* Please make sure that before you make any changes you backup your files.
* These steps assume you are pointing to the webfocus76 exploded directory for
your Web Application rather than the webfocus76.war file.

A. Locate the intl.jar file under the following directory:
\ibi\WebFOCUS76\webapps\webfocus76\Web-INF\lib\intl.jar

B. Make a directory called temp (C:\temp). Copy the jar file to this temp
directory. All the changes will be made to the "copy" before it replaces
the old jar file.

C. Unjar the "copied" jar file. Perform the following jar command from within
DOS, to unjar the jar file. Again, this will be done to the copy made in
Step B: C:\temp>jar xf intl.jar

D. Review unjar'd jar file. The directory structure will now be available for
you in your temporary directory. You can issue the following C:\temp>dir

E. Delete the "copied" jar file because once you make your change to whatever
file, we're going to re-create the jar file. This will be the jar file set
in the C:\temp directory.

F. At this point, you have the entire unjar'd intl.jar file. You need to
locate the WORP_Bundle_en.properties located under:
C:\temp\ibi\intl

G. Locate the bannerMyReport option under the Banner links section

H. Remove My Reports so that it looks like the following
bannerMyReport=
Save Changes

I. Once your change(s) have been made, you now need to re-create the JAR
file. Perform the following jar command from within DOS:
jar -cf intl.jar *

J. Copy the newly created jar file from the C:\temp directory into the
\ibi\WebFOCUS76\webapps\webfocus76\Web-INF\lib\intl.jar file.

K. Reload your Web Application and recycle the Web Server for the changes to
take effect.

Regards,
Monica Vinasco

Hi Dan,

This problem is fixed under WebFOCUS 761 and higher.

Thanks Monica

Can't wait for that 7.6.1 release. Maybe tomorrow?

Fridays are always fun


Regards,

-- Dan