OBIEE 11G – ADDING CUSTOM LINKS WITH ICONS
‘Custom links’ are a way of embedding external content into the OBIEE home page and main header at the top of the webpage. This can be very useful to a user as it allows all the external content they require to be located in 1 centralised area, primarily increasing work efficiency.
In this article I will show you a walkthrough on how to embed and configure Custom Links into the OBIEE home page and main header. The software I am using in this walkthrough consists of:
• OBIEE 11.1.1.6.7 (Being hosted on a virtual machine running Linux)
• Google Chrome (To access OBIEE and external content)
• WinSCP (Free SFTP and FTP client to transfer files between the virtual machine and host machine. Link to WinSCP website: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php)
• Paint (To configure images which will be used as logos within the Custom Links)
Note: You will be configuring the files that were installed with OBIEE 11g, it is recommended that you back up the OBIEE 11g files when accessed before you make changes to them.
Begin by locating and opening the ‘instanceconfig.xml’ file which can be found at the following directory: ‘MIDDLEWARE_HOME/ORACLE_INSTANCE/instancen/config/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obipsn’. Here is a screenshot of where the file is located on my virtual machine:
You need to add the ‘CustomLinks’ element into the instanceconfig.xml file so that Custom Links will be visible within OBIEE. Near the very top of the document after the ‘<ServerInstance>’ line, make a new line and type the following into the document:
<ServerInstance>
<CustomLinks>
<Enabled>true</Enabled
<filePath>root/mydirectory/mysubdirectory/customlinks.xml</filePath
</CustomLinks>
You need to change the <filepath>root/mydirectory/mysubdirectory/customlinks.xml</filepath> line so it is pointing at the customlinks.xml file. This file can be found at ‘ORACLE_INSTANCE/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obipsn’ (on my virtual machine I can find the file at the following directory path: ‘/u01/app/obiee/instances/instance1/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obips1’):
Once the file path line has been amended, save the instanceconfig.xml file and close it:
Now that OBIEE has been configured to show Custom Links, you need to add some in. Navigate back to the customlinks.xml file and open it. We should see a document similar to this:
We are now going to add a Custom Link with the display name ‘Oracle 1’ which will appear between the ‘Advanced’ and ‘Administration’ links in the main header. Enter the following into the document after the <customLinks> element and example Custom Links (Note: For a full table of elements to use to configure your Custom Links and their descriptions, please see the end of this article):
<link id=”l1” name=”Oracle 1” description=”Oracle” src=”http://www.oracle.com” target=”blank” >
<locations>
<location name=”header” insertBefore=”admin” />
</locations>
</link>
The document should look like this after the amendments:
Save the file and then start/restart Oracle BI services. Open up OBIEE in your web browser once it has started/restarted and log in, you should see the following amendments in the main header at the top of the page:
If you click on the link, a new tab within your browser will open and the Oracle website will load. This proves that our Custom Link is functional:
Next, we are going to add an icon next to the Custom Link. Find an image suitable for the icon and paste it into any image editing software. Edit the picture so the dimensions are 0.34×0.34cm (I find these dimensions work the best) and save it with the name ‘test_logo’ in a .PNG format in an easy to find location. In my walkthrough I am going to use the Oracle ‘O’ logo:
We are now going to drop the icon into 4 specific locations within the OBIEE directory. These locations are:
•‘MIDDLEWARE_HOME/ORACLE_INSTANCE/instancen/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obipsn/analyticsRes/sk_MobileDarkStyle/common’
•‘MIDDLEWARE_HOME/ORACLE_INSTANCE/instancen/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obipsn/analyticsRes/sk_MobileStyle/common’
•‘MIDDLEWARE_HOME/Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app/res/sk_blafp/common’
•‘MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/bi_server1/tmp/_WL_User/analytics_11.1.1/7dezjl/war/res/sk_blafp/common’
I use the WinSCP tool to connect to the virtual machine and transfer the icon into these 4 locations by dragging the file over and copying it:
Once you have dropped the icon into the 4 locations, you then need to add the ‘<iconSmall>’ element into the customlinks.xml file to identify that the custom link has an icon. Amend the customlinks.xml file so it looks similar to the code below:
<link id=”l1” name=”Oracle 1” description=”Oracle” src=”http://www.oracle.com” target=”blank” iconSmall=”common/ICON_NAME.png” >
<locations>
<location name=”header” insertBefore=”admin” />
</locations>
</link>
Save the amendments and restart Oracle BI Services. Log into OBIEE and notice that the Custom Link now shows an icon on the left hand side of it:
We are now going to add a Custom Link into the ‘Get Started…’ section of the home page, this Custom Link will take us to the Google website. Open up the customlinks.xml file and add the following code underneath the Oracle Custom link:
<link id=”L2” name=”Google” description=”Google” src=http://www.google.com target=”blank” >
<locations>
<location name=”getstarted” />
</locations>
</link>
Save the file, restart Oracle BI Services and log into OBIEE. Navigate to the home page and notice that in the ‘Get Started…’ section at the bottom right hand side, we now have a link that says ‘Google’. If we click on it, a new tab will open in the web browser and load the Google website:
I am now going to add an icon to this Custom Link. Find an image suitable for the icon and paste it into any image editing software. Edit the picture so the dimensions are 0.83×0.83cm (I find these dimensions work the best) and save it with the name ‘google_logo’ in a .PNG format in an easy to find location. In my walkthrough I am going to use the Google ‘g’ logo:
Next, using the WinSCP tool, drop the icon into the same 4 places as we did with our Oracle icon:
Once you have dropped the icon into the 4 locations, you then need to add the ‘<iconLarge>’ element into the customlinks.xml file (icons in the ‘Get Started’ section need to use the <iconLarge> element and icons in the main header need to use the <iconSmall> element). Amend the customlinks.xml file so it looks similar to the code below:
<link id=”l2” name=”Google” description=”Google” src=http://www.google.com target=”blank” iconLarge=”common/google_logo.png” >
<locations>
<location name=”getstarted” />
</locations>
</link>
Save the file, restart Oracle BI Services, then log into OBIEE. Notice that out ‘Google’ Custom Link now has an icon next to it:
We now have 2 functional Custom Links within OBIEE with icons. We can add many more Custom Links into OBIEE and there are loads more formatting options. Please see the table below for all element options and their descriptions for the customlinks.xml file below:
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