Creating a SmartView Connection
Oracle Smart View for Microsoft Office allows users to create a connection to their source system. The link lets users rely on Office functions to analyze and interpret the data from the system.
The Smart View Panel is the tool used to connect to your data source, manage your private and shared connections, create an ad hoc grid, access saved smart forms, and view task lists. When you connect to your data source, it may require users to enter their username and password to ensure they are authorized to access the system.
You can set this up according to your company guidelines and preferences. The system administrator determines the security requirements. Users can also choose to connect to one domain with multiple instances or multiple domain providers.
For example, Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting, Oracle Analytics Cloud, and Essbase all allow you to connect to each instance from the same source system - using just one data connection.
There are two main ways to create a Smart View connection: a Shared Connection or a Private Connection. It will vary based on the use case, but most employees will use either a shared connection or a private connection. In some cases, though, they can use both.
Here are some insights into how each of these functions:
Smart View Shared Connection
You can create a Smart View Shared Connection with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud sources. Users can create multiple shared connections to their company domains, or they can launch a single instance in each of the connections.
For example, each sheet within an Excel workbook could be connected to only one business instance. This will allow you to see data from your Planning & Budgeting instance on one sheet while displaying your Financial Consolidation and Close instance on another sheet.
You could also create a shared connection that lets you access each business instance within a single sheet. If they are all on the same domain, your users can create reports that consolidate data from various business instances into one high-quality report. This report helps your team confirm that data across the different instances are accurate as well.
Shared Connections are accessed using the Smart View panel and can be saved directly to the user's computer with a URL link. Alternatively, they can be saved to a web server in an XML file. With this option, the security admin must set it up and then provide the file to each user. Once the file is saved, users can see the Shared Connection in their Smart View Panel. However, without admin rights, the users cannot edit or change the name of a connection.
Smart View Private Connection
Another way to access the Smart View panel is through a Private Connection. Users can save a Shared Connection to the Private Connections folder - which creates the new Private Connection.
Doing so allows individual users to rename their private connections on their machines. If someone has access to multiple domains and different instances within those domains, they will need to create many different shared connections. However, saving them as private connections makes accessing reports easier in the future.
They can quickly rename, organize, and switch between the connections to perform ad-hoc analysis.
In other words, a private connection is a shared connection that has been saved to an individual's machine so it can be renamed and organized. The shared connection links to a domain, but a private connection simplifies the steps needed to switch between domains.
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