OBI EE Usage Tracking - Part 1

This post kicks off a theme on Usage Tracking. The standard implementation falls short of providing true business support. There are many business (and IT) reasons for understanding usage:

• License Management (Costs)
• Performance Degradation (Improvement)
• OBI EE (Dashboards) Popularity

Let's start with a simple question (normally motivated by license management)... when did a user last access OBI EE?

1. Access your "Usage Tracking" subject area and choose the following columns:

• Users."User Name"
• "Query Time".Date (x2)

2. Using the two "Query Time".Date columns edit each column formula:

• Last Accessed: MAX("Query Time".Date)
• Days Since Last Access:

            TIMESTAMPDIFF(SQL_TSI_DAY, MAX("Query Time"."Date"), Current_TimeStamp)

3. Perhaps remove any irrelevant data from the date (e.g. 12:00:00AM) using the date short format, provide custom headings for columns with functions and possibly filter out system accounts (e.g. Administrator).

4. Load the request onto a Dashboard page with a page prompt and get something like this...

From DR. OBI

This theme will not deal with the implementation of Usage Tracking, this area is well documented by Oracle and John Minkjan has comprehensive instructions which are easy to follow. The implementation of Usage Tracking between 10.x and 11.x versions has changed little.