OBIEE – Column Tips in report columns in Dashboard

Scenario – Your dashboard has a requirement to show Column Tool Tips for the measures, upon mouse hover.
Solution – This requirement can be easily implemented with the help of HTML. The solution will need few changes at the dashboard end and a small change in the instanceconfig.xml file to support the changes.

Following are the steps of implementing the column tool tips:
a. Please add the False in the instanceconfig.xml file. Make sure that this paramter is added outside of the the AdvancedReporting tags in the instanceconfig.xml file. HardenXSS is set to true by default in all new versions of OBIEE. Setting HardenXSS to False will allow developers to use HTML to mark up reports and dashboards which is useful in many circumstances. Oracle BI Presentation Services is secured against cross-site scripting (XSS) by the HardenXSS element. It does so by prohibiting HTML input in fields in Oracle BI Presentation Services that would otherwise accept HTML. Now if we use html markups in the reports or dashboard, we will see html tags in the application, reason is HardenXSS element is set to true. Default setting was done for making the web application more secure, but Oracle does recommend setting this to False incase we need the html to mark up the reports.
b. Restart the services.
c. Please add the HTML tag within column heading.
d. For this, go to column format and check custom heading.
e. Add html tag like Column Name
f. Run the report and you shall see the tool tip on hovering your mouse on the column.
Pros:
1) Columns or Measures described effectively in tool tips.
2) Effective in showing the calculations used for the columns.
3) More user friendliness.
Cons:
1) This works well in all the views other than Charts. The Measure Labels in the charts do not show the column names or the tool tips upon mouse-over, whereas it shows the HTML tags that are in Column Heading. This is because the Chart Engines do not identify the HTML tags. This has been identified as a bug by Oracle and is expected to be corrected in the future versions of OBIEE.