THIS … I do not know how to start, or where … I have been doing OTBI for soo long … and just exchanging experiences with a customer opened my eyes to something I should have been doing all along! Thank you Kash, for showing me how to reuse columns in OTBI. Now let to share this with you!
What problem is this solving
Ever created amazingly sophisticated formulas in OTBI? The power of OTBI allows you to calculate formulas to compute whatever statistic you need. E.g. the formula below is a short one I use to calculate the activity score, where I compare the YTD appointment targets with the YTD completed appointments.
But what if you need to reuse such formulas in multiple reports? Do we really need to just copy the formulas from report to report? And hope we keep the formulas in synch when changes are required?
Reusing Columns in OTBI
Not at all!
Once a column is ready to be reused, the column can be saved for reuse, independently from the report.
Notice anything different in the example below? After saving the column for reuse, the icon of the ‘Activity Score’ column has changed indicating this is a saved reusable column now.
What actually happens is that the column gets saved for reuse in the reporting catalog. This includes both the column formula and the properties (formating, drill down, data mask, …).
And then the column can be imported in other reports! Actually, once a column becomes a shared column you cannot even update the column formula in reports anymore. You can only do that directly from the catalog as shown in the image above. It truly becomes an entity to manage and keep up to date outside of a report. These become columns that can be used across many reports in a consistent uniform way.
Why this matters
Having to maintain sophisticated calculated columns that need to be consistently used over multiple reports is not easy. That is unless you can share the formulas easily. And that is exactly what this capability is about.
This is not only about consistency in the method of calculation though. It is also about the consistency of user experience as all column properties can be shared. This is not only handy when only one person creates reports, but especially important if you create reports with a group of analysts.
This should completely transform the way you designed reports so far, and it definitely will change the way I make them. Why did I never realize this before …
Let me know what you think!
