OBIEE Integration with Salesforce.com – Part 4 Embed OBIEE to SFDC

OBIEE Integration with Salesforce.com

1. Part 1 Setting Up SFDC
2. Part 2 Setting Up ODBC Driver
3. Part 3 Creating Your First Answers (Analysis) Report
4. Part 4 Embed OBIEE to SFDC

From Part 3, you should have prepared everything from OBIEE side. There are 3 ways for us to embed OBIEE to Salesforce.com but 99% of the time, you would only use 2 of them hence I will teach the 2 different ways.

1. Web Tabs – A basic tab in Salesforce.com which will embed the OBIEE
2. VisualForce Page – A custom page within any Salesforce.com page.

O, but wait, there’s more to configure within OBIEE before we continue. For OBIEE to be displayed on Salesforce.com, there are 2 requirements from Salesforce.com

1. SSL Enabled – In OBIEE, enable SSL through Weblogic but I will not go through this. There are many resources in the web which will walk you through this. Some reference sites: OBIEE SSL Oracle Documentation, Another Oracle OBIEE SSL Documentation, Debashis Blog Post. Yeah, I hope Debashis would update to a newer version too.
2. Enable iFrame in OBIEE – which is quite simple and I will go through this here.

I would also suggest you to enable HTML5 if you are on 11.1.1.9 and if you are still on 11.1.1.7 then turn on PNG instead of Flash charts, for more information on how to do this, click here.

Configuring OBIEE iFrame

Step 1 – Make sure all services are turned off.
Step 2 – Add the following script to … instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\instanceconfig.xml

<Security>
<InIFrameRenderingMode>allow</InIFrameRenderingMode>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<ClientSessionExpireMinutes>210</ClientSessionExpireMinutes>
</Security>

Step 3 – Add the following script to … \Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\jbipsapp\WEB-INF\web.xml

<context-param>
<param-name>oracle.adf.view.rich.security.FRAME_BURSTING</param-name>
<param-value>never</param-value>
</context-param>

Step 4 – Start Services

Your ready!!!

Embedding OBIEE Using Web Tabs

Step 1 – Click Setup -> Type Tabs -> Click Tabs -> Click New next to web tabs.

Step 2 – Choose layout, Full Page Width is the most common and then click next.

Step 3 – Give the Tab a name, I’ve called mine Campaign Dashboard. Choose a tab style color and setup the Frame Height as well. Click Next.

 

Step 4 – Fill in the link for the dashboard. Use the GO URL if you like. A comprehensive guide to Go URL can be viewed here.

 

Step 5 – Click the “+” sign to add the Dashboard to the tabs. Click the Web Tab name you created from step 3.

Step 6 – It should now appear in the tabs.

Step 7 – Click the tab and check the results.

Embedding OBIEE Using VisualForce Page – with Dynamic Parameters Passed to OBIEE

Since we are going to use VisualForce Page, I might as well go a little further by passing Campaign Type into OBIEE Prompts.

Step 1 – Click Setup -> Type Pages -> Click Pages -> Click Create New View

Step 2 – Give the VisualForce Page a label -> Enter the following code in Visualforce Markup

<apex:page standardcontroller="Campaign" extensions="CampaignController" sidebar="false" showHeader="false">
    <headers> 
        <frame-options policy="SAMEORIGIN"/> 
    </headers>    

    <apex:iframe src="{!url}" height="600px" width="100%" />
    
</apex:page>

Step 3 – Click Save

Step 4 – We are now required to go into developer console. You can do this after you have saved or via under your name.

Step 5 – Your code should be displayed in the tab where it says .vfp for VisualForce Page. Double check it.

Step 6 – What we are interested in is the Controller Page. You will need to add the following controller codes. In the codes, we have added Type so that the dashboard will directly pass in the values of Type. We can also pass in the name but for now we will not.

public class CampaignController {
    public Campaign ca {get; set;}
    public string url {get;set;}
     public string url2 {get;set;}
    public CampaignController(ApexPages.StandardController controller){
    	ca = (Campaign)controller.getRecord();
        ca = [SELECT Name, Type From Campaign WHERE id = :ca.id];
url = 'https://steveyeung:7002/analytics/saw.dll?PortalPages&PortalPath=/shared/MondayBI SFDC/_portal/Campaigns&Page=Overview&Action=Navigate&P0=1&P1=eq&P2=CAMPAIGN.TYPE&P3=' + ca.Type;     
    }
}

Step 7 – Click Setup -> Type in Page Layout -> Click Campaign Page Layout -> Edit the Page Layout

Step 8 – Click Visualforce Pages -> Drag and Drop your create page layout to the desired area on the page. Then click save.

Step 9 – Click Campaign -> Click any campaigns

Step 10 – Verify your page is shown like below

In Part 5, I will be going through some important best practices.

1. Part 1 Setting Up SFDC
2. Part 2 Setting Up ODBC Driver
3. Part 3 Creating Your First Answers (Analysis) Report
4. Part 4 Embed OBIEE to SFDC