The Value of Adding Commentary to OBIEE

As you probably already know, OBIEE does not have a commentary function built in.

So, you and your team are probably using manual workarounds — taking screenshots, adding text descriptions, referencing documents in email attachments — to discuss insights.

But what if you could add OBIEE comments and documents directly to dashboards and reports? How much time and effort would that feature save you?

In this blog post, we’ll share how you can implement that functionality with one simple tool and — more importantly — how it will help your team.

Improvement to Your Workflow

Right now, you have OBIEE with various dashboards and reports. You really need to explain something included in your report, so what do you do? Typically, users take a screenshot, attach it to an email, and send a long text description attempting to explain the image.

Forcing users to leave the application slows down productivity. And, when your users constantly have to leave your system, it lowers the return you’re getting on your BI technology investment.

When you can add commentary straight to your dashboard or report, you don’t have to leave OBIEE — your users are more productive and can spend more time focusing on data analysis.

Communicating Clearly

The manual process described in the section above can also create inconsistencies in the message you’re trying to convey. Sending an email does not guarantee the recipient will even see the email or remember. Additionally, you have the added concern of saving these screenshots on your computer in a way that makes sense.

Without having your commentary within the report or dashboard — where the context is crystal clear — your insights and messages may be misconstrued.

Quickly Discovering Insights

The last two points relate directly to this final value-add. Communication is undoubtedly very important in our modern world. With so many forms of communication, it can be difficult to keep up.

You already have too many emails, too many instant messages, and most likely too many meetings. The goal of any BI application is to discover and expose actionable information from data, but without direct collaboration, discovering insights becomes a slow, difficult process. You’re either stuck hunting through your emails or you have to get on another call to have it explained to you.

By allowing users to collaborate immediately in the BI application, new insights can be discovered even faster. Any BI conversation should maintain its own dedicated communication channel, and the optimal place for these conversations is as close to the information-consumption phase as possible. By allowing users to collaborate in discussions over results at the same location as the data, users will be empowered to extract as much information as possible.

How to Add Commentary Directly in OBIEE

There are a few ways to do this yourself, such as using a text object on a dashboard, a write-back enabled table, or even odd iFrame solutions. But none of those solutions are going to be as comprehensive or unobtrusive as CollaborateBI.

This tool was developed to add OBIEE commentary directly in the tool, without taking over the look and feel you’re used to. With CollaborateBI, you can add annotations straight to dashboards and reports, while also adding integral documents. These simple steps will obviously improve your workflow, but this tool takes it one step further. CollaborateBI can also integrate with the instant messenger tool and email software used by your organization, so you can receive notifications when commentary has been added.

With this functionality, your workflow will be streamlined, your data will be more consistent, and you’ll be able to quickly discover insights.

Want to know more about CollaborateBI’s functionality?

Or join us for our CollaborateBI webinar!