About Dashboard Template Pages for New Users

Dashboard template pages are dashboard pages that are used to populate the personal dashboards (My Dashboard) of new users on their initial login. This allows users to see one or more dashboard pages with content rather than an empty dashboard when they first log in. It also gives users a starting point to build their own dashboard pages.

How Dashboard Template Pages Work

You create dashboard template pages for your users in dashboards that have a designated name (by default the designated name is "default") and that you save in subfolders of /Shared Folders. When a new user logs in for the first time, Oracle BI EE searches for dashboard template pages in all dashboards that have the designated name, copies all dashboard template pages to which the user has permission to the user's My Dashboard folder, and displays them in the user's My Dashboard.

If a user has permissions to dashboard template pages in multiple dashboards, then Oracle BI EE copies all template pages from those dashboards to the user's My Dashboard folder and displays them alphabetically by name in the user's My Dashboard. If two pages have the same name, then the name of one of the pages is prefixed with the name of the folder in which the dashboard was saved.

Where Oracle BI EE Searches for Dashboard Template Pages

By default, Oracle BI EE searches for dashboard template pages in all dashboards that are named "default" and that have been saved in subfolders of /Shared Folders. (It searches only subfolders under /Shared Folders (for example, /Shared Folders/Finance) and not the entire hierarchy (for example, not /Shared Folders/Finance/Div1.)

If your organization has designated a name other than "default" for the name of dashboards that contain dashboard template pages, then Oracle BI EE searches for dashboard template pages in dashboards with that name (for example, "Templates") rather than "default" in subfolders of /Shared Folders.

To designate a name other than "default" for the name of dashboards that contain dashboard template pages, your administrator must set the DefaultName element in the instanceconfig.xml file. For information, see "Manually Changing Presentation Settings" in System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

How Users Can Work with Dashboard Template Pages

Users can use dashboard template pages:

As a starting point to build their own dashboard pages.

Users can change any of the content on these dashboard template pages. Any changes that they make to the content are made to their local copies of the dashboard template pages in their My Dashboard folders, and not to the original dashboard template pages.
As examples of additional pages that they might want to build.

If users delete a dashboard template page from their My Dashboard, then they cannot repopulate My Dashboard with the page. However, if users delete their entire My Dashboard, when they log in again or navigate to My Dashboard again, their My Dashboard is recreated with all the latest dashboard template pages.