Smart View 11.1.2.5.800

Oracle has released a new version of the Smart View Office add-in: 11.1.2.5.800. Most of the new features are meant to be used with Essbase:

• New Essbase Expense Type Option - inverts the sign for data in columns related to revenue, liability, and owner's equity accounts (for ASO databases)
• New option called Enable Varying Attributes allows Essbase users to display #Invalid or #NumericZero for cells that are empty only because they are not associated with the context attribute or varying attribute in a query
• You can now use an MDX-based calculation script to calculate an ASO database in Oracle Analytics Cloud
• New View Properties button in the OBI EE ribbon
• Enhanced Move Formatting options - since Move Formatting on Operations may affect performance on zoom operations, this Oracle Smart View for Office formatting option is now always disabled by default.

You can read more about these features in the SV 11.1.2.5.800 readme file.

Smart View Health Check

Health Check is a handy new tool that has been added to the SV Help menu.

The tool displays version details for the operating system, Excel and Smart View and also shows the most important settings affecting SV performance and stability. There is a button you can click to set recommended settings on the user profile level. This is nice functionality for troubleshooting refresh issues that are often caused by timeout settings not being tuned properly in Windows registry.

Firefox Extension

Firefox ESR 60 and later require all add-ons to be created in the new WebExtension format (as mentioned in my previous post). Oracle has now updated the Firefox extension that is used by the “Open in Smart View” links in EPM/Hyperion web forms (only Firefox needs this extension - Internet Explorer opens the links in a different way). It's worth noting that the extension is no more distributed with the Smart View package like it used to be and therefore all Firefox users need to install it separately from the Mozilla Add-ons website. It is also possible to automate the installation using alternative distribution options.

Links

• Download the latest version on the Smart View website: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/smart-view-for-office/overview/index.html
• Readme file for Smart View 11.1.2.5.800
• Smart View add-on on the Mozilla Add-ons website

Firefox Update Breaks Smart View Links (On-Premise + Cloud)

Mozilla has just released a new version of their browser: Firefox 57 “Quantum”. The new release is promised to be even faster than before, but there is one downside as well; it disables extensions that haven’t been implemented with the new WebExtensions technology. The extension installed by Oracle Smart View is among the "legacy" extensions that can't be used with the latest Firefox version.

This means that the "Open in Smart View" links in HFM, Planning, PBCS and FCCS will cease to work in latest Firefox because they rely on the old extension.

Open in Smart View (HFM)

Open in Smart View (PBCS)

Oracle has published the following statement in the latest Smart View readme file and also in the monthly notes for the EPM Cloud Services.

USING FIREFOX ESR 52.4.2 WITH SMART VIEW

Future releases of Mozilla Firefox will be phasing out support for XUL-based add-ons such as Smart View. Starting in mid-November 2017, only add-ons and extensions built with new web extension technology will work in Firefox. Therefore, Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 only supports Firefox versions up to ESR 52.4.1. If you want to continue using Firefox with Smart View 11.1.2.5.710, do not upgrade your Firefox browser. If your Firefox browser is set to automatically install updates, Oracle recommends changing the setting to “Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them.” See the Firefox help for instructions on changing this setting.

I have not heard any official statements yet, but I hope that Oracle will update the Smart View extension to work with the latest version soon. Meanwhile your best option is to use the less frequently updated Firefox ESR version as Oracle recommends.

No More Remote XUL Manager!

This is a quick post to point out a cool feature in EPM 11.1.2.4 that I have somehow overlooked (thanks to Nicklas Englund for the tip!). In previous EPM versions you had to install an extension called Remote XUL Manager in order to use EPM web applications with the Firefox browser. The EPM System certification matrix document also included a note about this: "Firefox 17+ ESR and 24+ ESR requires Remote XUL Manager 1.0.1 Add-on". In 11.1.2.4 this requirement has suddenly been removed without so much as a word in the readme file!