Chapter 16. Customizing the Style of Dashboards

Oracle Business Intelligence 12c comes with built-in styles which create a specific look for your users. The default style includes an Oracle logo in the top-left, a gray border, black words, blue page titles, and a white page background. This style is called Alta. There are several styles you can choose from, each with their own set of colors, spacing, and region shapes. Each dashboard can use a different style which you can set yourself at any time.

If none of the available styles suit your company or project, then the good news is that you can create your own styles and load them into the BI Server. You can also change the default styles for all dashboards if you need to.

This chapter shows you how to change styles, and how to create and implement a new style.

Throughout the Oracle BI system, users are presented with words and messages that guide them. An example would be the sign out message, which is fairly obvious what it does! But other...

Multiple skins and styles in one environment

Oracle BI can house several customized looks or branding profiles. This can be dynamically set by associating a particular style with a particular user, group, or application role. Let's say Sally Joe in the Finance department logs in to the Oracle BI portal. Sally may be presented with a blue and white color scheme with the corporate logo showing in the portal whereas her constituent, Erich in the European office, may log in to the Oracle BI portal and be presented with a brown and gold color scheme showing the flag of Germany as the logo. This dynamic shifting of branding to specific end users can be achieved by relating a specific style to a specific user, group, or application role. It could also be established by setting a default style for all users and having only specified users, groups, and roles associated with a different perspective.

Another nuance is that several aspects of branding can be localized. That is to say that depending...

Creating your own look and feel - overview

The steps in the following section take advantage of the Oracle BI 12c skinning and styling customization options. Modifying these options is predominantly manual in nature. The idea of look and feel as it relates to Oracle BI translates into skins, styles, and messages.

Messages are usually the textual elements that are shown in the Oracle BI portal (presentation services) and can be anything from the header logo and text, to the name of each link shown above the dashboard tabs. An example of the latter would be changing the sign out link on the portal dashboard to render Get out of here! instead.

Styles and skins relate to both the color scheme shown in the Oracle BI portal and the visible nature of Oracle BI Analysis Views. An example of modifying a style would be to change the background color of a dashboard from the default white color to a light gray. An example of skinning would be to modify the bar chart's color scheme from its default to...

A review - what I should now know!

• How to change the style of the dashboard 

• Using existing styles

• How to create your own look and style

• How to create custom messages

Summary

In this chapter, we showed how to make your system match the style of your company. We showed two methods of deploying custom styling; the deployed application and the deployed folder method. Which method you choose will depend on your standard company policy.

We also showed how to change the words displayed on the screens using a custom message table.

The changes shown were minor, but you now have the framework to implement your customizations, including CSS and images.

When you create your own style, follow a few simple rules:

• Don't boil the ocean - make small incremental changes

• Involve marketing - try to follow corporate color schemes

• Consider your users' screens. We often work with customers who have smaller screens than the developer!