Specifying Dashboard Page Defaults Including Headers and Footers

19 Configuring and Managing Agents 19-1 19 Configuring and Managing Agents If your organization licensed Oracle BI Delivers and if you have the appropriate privileges, then you can use the agents functionality as part of a default installation with no additional configuration. This chapter describes how agents are used, what affects agents, about advanced configuration settings that affect agents, managing device types for agents, and monitoring agent sessions. For information about using agents, see Delivering Content in Oracle Fusion Middleware Users Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. This chapter includes the following topics: ■ Section 19.1, How Are Agents Used? ■ Section 19.2, How Do Antivirus Software and Privileges Affect Agents? ■ Section 19.3, Configuring Settings That Affect Agents ■ Section 19.4, Managing Device Types for Agents ■ Section 19.5, Monitoring Active Agent Sessions 19.1 How Are Agents Used? Agents deliver targeted analytics to users based on a combination of schedule and trigger event. Delivery can be by a variety of routes, for example to Dashboard Alerts or to e-mail. To create an agent, Oracle Business Intelligence users with the Create Agent privilege define the operations that the agent is to perform. Oracle BI Presentation Services packages information such as priority, delivery devices, and user, into a job, and tells Oracle BI Scheduler when to execute the job. For information, see What is Oracle BI Scheduler? in Oracle Fusion Middleware Scheduling Jobs Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Note: If you are migrating an Oracle Business Intelligence environment to a new system, then ensure that you also migrate the Oracle Business Intelligence repository file, the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, and the Oracle BI Scheduler tables. The Oracle BI Scheduler tables are required for agents. See Section 8.5.6, Diagnosing Issues with Agents for information about diagnostics and log files for agents. 19-2 System Administrators Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 19.2 How Do Antivirus Software and Privileges Affect Agents? This section provides the following information about agents: ■ Section 19.2.1, How Does Antivirus Software Affect Agents? ■ Section 19.2.2, What Privileges Affect Agents? 19.2.1 How Does Antivirus Software Affect Agents? Some antivirus software programs, such as Norton AntiVirus, enable a script-blocking feature, which tries to block all calls made by scripts to system objects such as the Windows file system object that the antivirus software deems unsafe. If you start a script as part of post-agent processing, then this antivirus feature might cause unexpected results. If you run antivirus software with a script-blocking feature on the computer where Oracle BI Scheduler is installed, then you should disable the script-blocking feature to prevent the software from unexpectedly blocking agent script calls. 19.2.2 What Privileges Affect Agents? You access the privilege settings for agents in the Delivers section of the Manage Privileges page in Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration. To create an agent, users must be granted the Create Agent privilege. To enable users with the Publish Agents for Subscription privilege, which provides the ability to change or to delete an agent, you must grant them the Modify permission to the shared agent objects and child objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. For information, see Managing Presentation Services Privileges in Oracle Fusion Middleware Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

19.3 Configuring Settings That Affect Agents

You configure settings for agents by changing values for Oracle BI Presentation Services or Oracle BI Scheduler. You configure delivery options for agents using the SA System subject area. This section contains the following topics: Note: If the Oracle BI Server is configured to authenticate users through database logons, then impersonation is permitted until the number of associated variables exceeds one for example, when session variables other than USER are associated with the initialization block. If the number of associated variables exceeds one, then the impersonated user does not have the password to log in to the database and to fill the other session variables. Agents work with database authentication, if only the initialization block that is set up for authentication in the Oracle BI Administration Tool uses a connection pool with pass-through login. That connection pool cannot be used for any other initialization block or request. For information about user authentication options, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. For information about pass-through login, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Metadata Repository Builders Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.