Action Link for OBIEE

Prerequisite : The security setup to reach OBIEE from E-Business Suite must be completed before creating Action Link (Action link screens enable to drill back into the transactional application screen from an Oracle BI request or dashboard).

Source : Metalink Note - 552735.1

In order to generate an Action Link you will first have to do the following:

1. Identify the Oracle E-Business Suite Application page/function that you want to link to. Obtain the function_id of that page and identify the querystring parameters required by that page. This will have to be done by going through Oracle E-Business Suite documentation.
2. Identify the Oracle E-Business Suite table that will support the parameters needed for the Oracle E-Business Suite function (page) that you want to build an Action link to and create this physical table in the Oracle E-Business Suite OLTP schema as an opaque view.

Here the OE_ORDER_HEADERS_ALL table was chosen because it is at the grain of the Order Header and supplies the HEADER_ID that we can use to join to the warehouse tables that contain the Order Header information. The function_id of the Oracle E-Business Suite page for Order Details and the parameters supported by that page were also identified from Oracle E-Business Suite documentation.

The Action Link URL is generated by calling the FND_RUN_FUNCTION.GET_RUN_FUNCTION_URL() function in the Oracle E-Business Suite Database Schema. For example:

SELECT
HEADER_ID,
fnd_run_function.get_run_function_url(
CAST(fnd_function.get_function_id('ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV') AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_RESP_APPL_ID) AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_RESP_ID) AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_SEC_GROUP_ID) AS NUMBER),
'HeaderId='||HEADER_ID||'&pFunctionName=ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV&pMode=NO&pageFunctionName=ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV',
NULL) as ORDER_HEADER_ACTION_LINK_URL
FROM OE_ORDER_HEADERS_ALL


The parameters to the function are:

p_function_id in number,
p_resp_appl_id in number,
p_resp_id in number,
p_security_group_id in number,
p_parameters in varchar2 default null,
p_override_agent in varchar2 default null

Here p_function_id is the function_id of the page that you want to navigate to, the next three parameters pass the security context to Oracle E-Business Suite. The value of these session variables will be set by the initialization block described in sub-section "Creating Init Block for setting Oracle E-Business Suite Context". The fourth parameter is optional and is used if the page you are navigating to accepts parameters. In many cases if you want to navigate to a particular record on the page you are navigating to (Action Links typically do this), you will need to supply those querystring parameters here. The function call returns a URL to the desired function with encrypted querystring parameters.

The next step is joining this opaque view to the base fact table in the Data Warehouse schema. This join represents a join of tables in different database schemas and will therefore happen in the Oracle BI Server.

IMPORTANT: Ensure sufficient filters are applied when requesting any columns from this opaque view so that a small data set is returned to the Oracle BI Server to join with the results from the warehouse schema. For demo environments, where the EBS table contains only thousands of rows, filters can be ignored. However, customer implementations will typically contain millions of rows so appropriate filters are required.

Map into the logical and presentation layers

Map the URL column from the opaque view into the logical star where you want to create the Action Link. Then expose this logical column in the appropriate presentation catalog. Also ensure that the user who will be logging into Oracle E-Business Suite Applications is assigned access to the appropriate presentation catalogs. For example:

Oracle BI Answers Configuration

When including this Action Link column in a report, edit the column properties to indicate this is of type ‘Hyperlink’. That will automatically make this a clickable link in an Answers report. Further customization can be done to embed an image instead of the text.

Oracle BI Presentation Catalog Configuration

Ensure the user who will be logging into Oracle E-Business Suite Applications is set up in the presentation catalog as a user with the appropriate permissions. You can make the dashboard that you want to embed into Oracle E-Business Suite the default dashboard for that user. This will take the user directly to that dashboard when they click on the hyperlink in Oracle E-Business Suite.