Maintain only the minimum number of views needed for the report; remove any unused views from the report by deleting them.

Removing a view from compounded view does not delete that view; instead, it merely hides that view within the report. To delete a view, open it, and click the properties button to the right of the view name, and then select Delete.

For table views, select or enter these settings:

• Paging Controls: Bottom
• Rows per Page: 15
• Enable alternating row "green bar" styling: Clear
• Enable column sorting in Dashboards: Select

• Parent attributes should always be located in the column farthest to the left, followed by the respective children attributes (in hierarchical order) if there are any
• Stretch table view to 100% width: The standard is to expand all table views to fit 100% within the available space in the column, on the Dashboards where they are placed. From within the Table View, click on the Table View Properties icon. Expand the Additional Formatting Options and enter Width = 100% and press the OK button. After you save the report and publish it to a dashboard, the reports will stretch to 100% of the available Dashboard Section. If the user exports the report to PDF via the Print to PDF feature, the report will also stretch to 100% of the available PDF document

Follow the principles in the following sections for chart views.

Generals

2D vs. 3D

Select these settings:

• Type: 2D Stacked
• Style: Rectangle

Always use 2D-type charts with rectangle style; never use 3D or gradients.

Specifying the percentage width for the columns present in the layout prevents the layout from skewing when viewed with a different screen resolution.

Axis Titles

• Remove obvious axis titles to conserve space
• Never hard-code text in axis titles
• Set axis title text to font size 8
• Recolor minor gridlines to minimum light gray.
• Use the Abbreviate feature for axis labels that display big numbers

Data Labels

Set data labels to "Default (On Rollover)" for all charts, except when properly applicable in a pie chart.

Alternative Set of Custom Colors for Applying to Charts or Other Objects

An alternative set of color groups is suggested when you must use a different set of colors other than those that default. You can use this alternative set for charts or any other objects in OBI reports. Manually set up colors using the hexadecimal code provided here.

Charts Involving Lines

Line Formats

• When lines are involved in charts, always format line as Width = 2, and Symbol = Off (unless symbols are specifically required in the chart)
• Prefer bright custom colors for lines (bright blue, bright red...)

Pie Charts

• For pie charts, set data labels to "Always" unless the pie chart has more than six wedges or when the possibility of an overlap exists (such as a pie chart with many small wedges)

• If there are a large number of data points, a better approach is to display some meaningful summary of tabular data in the chart in a compound view
• As part of the section 508 compliance requirements, Web pages must be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color (for example, from context or markup)

Title Name

Make sure that the title name is the name of the report. Always select the Display Saved Name option and ensure that there are no hard-coded titles in the reports.

Subtitles, Start, End Time, or Last Refresh Time

Always include subtitles, either as references to an available navigation in the report or with time and date run information.

Example 1

Example 2

Help URL

Include a help URL in the report title view. Refer to section 3.3 in this document for more details.

Line and Color Formatting

As illustrated in the following example, follow these formatting guidelines:

• Position: Custom
• Border Style: Double

Border color: #660000

Report Title Images

• Always embed images in report title views. In order to embed an image in a report title, find the image that you want to use from the following table and enter that image reference in the Logo field of the Title View on the report (these will always be prefixed with "fmap:Images/." These are meant as guidelines; please use whichever image seems most appropriate.
• Make sure that the same image does not appear multiple times on a single dashboard page

Pivot Table Aggregations

Always prefer aggregations at column level (in the criteria tab directly), and only use pivot table aggregation when criteria tab aggregation is not possible.

Formatting for Total Lines and Columns

Color code for regular table and pivot table total lines (both for labels and values): #F5F3D9.

Example:

Set font color using the Format Labels and Format Values options, as shown in the following example:

Include column selectors in reports whenever possible. Column selectors are exposed on the right side to title views, with a caption located at the top of the selector and a background color of #F5F3D9. The Go button should be unavailable (set within the properties of the column selector).

Do not use report-level prompts in OBI Applications reports, except for specific requirements that only this feature can meet. Typically, it's best to replace report prompts with a dashboard page prompt properly embedded in a dashboard. The previous report example illustrates this concept.

View Selectors

Use view selectors only when a report can expose both a set of summary graph views or a detailed table with granular data. Only in this case, build a view selector that gives an option between two distinct compound views.

Otherwise, do not use view selectors in OBIAs.

HTML Content

Do not insert any HTML content in views besides the tags allowed by the static text views (<i>,<b>,<u>,<br>).

An alternative set of color groups is suggested here in case you need to use a different set than those that default. You can use this alternative set for charts or any other objects in OBI reports. You must manually set colors using the hexadecimal code provided here.