Wel­come back to our Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud (OAC) blog series! In this edi­tion, we’re excited to be diving into the high­lights of the Novem­ber 2024 update, which brings a range of power­ful new fea­tures and enhance­ments.  We’ll also explore an Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Gen AI fea­ture that was released in Septem­ber – the Oracle Ana­lyt­ics AI Assistant.

This release empowers users to fine-tune their ana­lyt­ics envir­on­ments, organ­ise resources more effect­ively, and lever­age AI for deeper insights. In today’s post, we’ll cover some of the most excit­ing fea­tures, but if you want to check out all the changes in this release or pre­vi­ous ones, just click on this link

Cre­ate and Share Work­book Can­vas Templates 

The Novem­ber 2024 update intro­duces a con­veni­ent new fea­ture for Work­flow tem­plates in OAC, designed to stream­line and speed up dash­board cre­ation. With Work­flow tem­plates, users can cre­ate, save, and share tem­plates that serve as start­ing points for dash­boards and reports, pro­mot­ing con­sist­ency and col­lab­or­a­tion across teams: 

Fig­ure 1: Select a Lay­out option

There are some ready-to-use lay­out tem­plates that will pop­u­late the can­vas with empty con­tain­ers, ready for visualizations:

Fig­ure 2: Avaliable Lay­out Templates

There’s also an option to save a cus­tom tem­plate and share it with oth­ers, avail­able by right-click­ing on the desired canvas:

Fig­ure 3: Sav­ing a Cus­tom Lay­out Template

After sav­ing a lay­out, it will be avail­able to use whenever a new Work­book is created:

Fig­ure 4: Updated list of avail­able Templates

Advanced Design and Customisation

The Novem­ber 2024 update also offers a wealth of cus­tom­isa­tion fea­tures, enabling users to tailor their OAC envir­on­ments to bet­ter fit their spe­cific needs. Key enhance­ments include:

  • Cre­ate and share Work­book themes: Shared themes can be eas­ily applied to a Work­book by click­ing on the Work­book Themes option in the menu and then select­ing one of the Shared Themes.

Fig­ure 5: Work­book Themes option

Fig­ure 6: Select­ing a Theme

What’s more, we can also cus­tom­ise the styl­ing prop­er­ties from the Work­book and then save them as a new theme, avail­able to select from the list:

Fig­ure 7: Save as new shared theme

Fig­ure 8: Updated Theme list

This fea­ture, paired with the abil­ity to cre­ate and share tem­plates, enables com­pan­ies to main­tain con­sist­ent stand­ards across dash­boards. Regard­less of the data­set used, users can select the company’s tem­plate and theme when cre­at­ing a new Workbook.

  • Cre­ate cus­tom tool­tips in Work­books: Cus­tom tool­tips can be cre­ated to provide addi­tional con­text and format­ted column descrip­tions for dash­board users. To cre­ate a cus­tom tool­tip, just select a visu­al­isa­tion and then click on the Edit but­ton in the Tool­tip sec­tion: 

Fig­ure 9: Tool­tip Section

The Cus­tom Tool­tip win­dow will appear, allow­ing us to cus­tom­ise the text, tags, and columns dis­played in the tool­tip. Addi­tion­ally, we can modify styl­ing options, such as font and colour:

Fig­ure 10: Cus­tom Tool­tip window

Fig­ure 11: Tool­tip shown in visualisation

  • Design data­sets more eas­ily: While cre­at­ing a data­set, OAC allows for auto­matic joins when insert­ing a table into the editor. If column names do not match, we can manu­ally cre­ate a join by drag­ging the small circle on the right side of a node and drop­ping it onto another node to estab­lish the connection.

Addi­tion­ally, we can now repos­i­tion nodes as we wish. There is also a but­ton in the top-right corner to arrange the lay­out automatically:

Fig­ure 12: Drag and Drop joins and lay­out modification

New options have also been added to the nodes: Pre­serve Grain and Always Include in Query. These options can be enabled or dis­abled by right-click­ing on a node. The first option allows us to main­tain a table’s level of detail, even after it has been joined with another table, whereas the second option ensures a table is included in a query even if it is not dir­ectly ref­er­enced in the visu­al­isa­tion. For instance, this is use­ful when apply­ing a fil­ter from a table that is not oth­er­wise used:

Fig­ure 13: New options for nodes

Upon hov­er­ing over a node, we can see some basic details about it without open­ing it:

Fig­ure 14: Tooltip

  • Use para­met­ers to show or hide a visu­al­isa­tion: Visu­al­isa­tions can now be dynam­ic­ally con­figured to appear or dis­ap­pear on the can­vas based on the value of a para­meter. This fea­ture facil­it­ates adapt­able design and offers a more inter­act­ive dash­board exper­i­ence for users. To imple­ment this func­tion­al­ity, we need to select the desired visu­al­isa­tion and then choose the para­meter that will con­trol its vis­ib­il­ity from the Vis­ib­il­ity Para­meter section:

Fig­ure 15: Vis­ib­il­ity Para­meter section

Then we click on the Set­tings but­ton next to it for a list of all pos­sible val­ues, and select the para­meter value to determ­ine when the visu­al­iz­a­tion becomes visible:

Fig­ure 16: Vis­ib­il­ity configuration

If the Work­book includes a fil­ter selector linked to the para­meter, we can now adjust its value to observe how the visu­al­isa­tions respond dynamically:

Fig­ure 17: Dif­fer­ent visu­al­isa­tions based on parameter

Fig­ure 18: Dif­fer­ent visu­al­isa­tions based on parameter

Share a Work­book URL with Per­sisted Fil­ter Values

Another use­ful fea­ture included in this update is the abil­ity to export a Work­book in its cur­rent state, pre­serving all fil­ter val­ues for when it is reopened. This can be done eas­ily, simply by select­ing Cur­rent state as the Apply state when we export the Workbook:

Fig­ure 19: Export­ing Work­book with Cur­rent state

If done cor­rectly, load­ing the work­book using the gen­er­ated link will retain the same fil­ter val­ues as when it was exported.

Enhanced Nav­ig­a­tion

As part of the Novem­ber 2024 update, nav­ig­a­tion and man­age­ment of the OAC Cata­log has also been optim­ised with the fol­low­ing features:

  • Man­age the con­tent cata­log more eas­ily: We can now move any num­ber of ele­ments in the Cata­log to a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion. To do so, click on the Move items but­ton after select­ing the desired ele­ments and then choose the new des­tin­a­tion in the win­dow that pops up:

Fig­ure 20: Move ele­ments using the Move item button

We can also drag and drop the selec­ted ele­ments dir­ectly into the des­tin­a­tion location:

Fig­ure 21: Move ele­ments using drag and drop

  • Cre­ate cus­tom groups of home page arti­facts: This fea­ture lets us cre­ate cus­tom groups of mul­tiple ele­ments and access them from the Home page. To cre­ate a new group, we just right-click on any ele­ment we want to include in the group and select the Add to Cus­tom Group option. Then, we choose New Cus­tom Group and enter a name for the group:

Fig­ure 22: Select the first ele­ment of the group

Fig­ure 23: Cre­ate a new group

Now that the group has been cre­ated, we can right–click on any other ele­ment we want to include and in the Add to Cus­tom Group option, select the new group:

Fig­ure 24: Add ele­ment to a group

Once the group has been cre­ated and pop­u­lated, we can use the Cus­tom­ize Home Page option in the menu to move it up or down our home page:

Fig­ure 25: Cus­tom­ize Home Page option

Fig­ure 26: Mov­ing the group on the Home page

We can also share it with other users or roles by using the Access sec­tion after click­ing on Inspect in the group menu:

Fig­ure 27: Access sec­tion to share with other users

Admin­is­tra­tion Features 

There are also some new fea­tures on the Admin­is­tra­tion side, primar­ily focused on man­aging per­mis­sions for the newly intro­duced actions and for schedul­ing the deploy­ment of future updates:

  • Grant per­mis­sions to ana­lyt­ics users at a finer gran­u­lar­ity than pre­vi­ously pos­sible: The new actions related to the cre­ation, man­age­ment, and shar­ing of groups, themes, and lay­outs offer greater flex­ib­il­ity to users when cus­tom­ising dash­boards. How­ever, man­aging the per­mis­sions asso­ci­ated with these actions is essen­tial, and this can now be done via the Con­sole menu:

Fig­ure 28: Access­ing the Lay­out & Themes per­mis­sion menu

When we click on Lay­outs & Themes, we’ll see a list of all the cur­rent shared themes and lay­outs. From there, we can make any of them hid­den to other users by uncheck­ing the box in the Vis­ible column. What’s more, we can change the per­mis­sions from Read-only to Read-write or vice versa by right-click­ing on any of the elements:

Fig­ure 29: Mak­ing an ele­ment non-visible

Fig­ure 30: Chan­ging the edi­tion per­mis­sions for an element

  • Select the pre­ferred update cycle: OAC now offers the option to select a pre­ferred soft­ware update cycle dur­ing instance cre­ation. Users can choose between two cycles. Early means updates are delivered imme­di­ately after they become avail­able, mak­ing this option par­tic­u­larly valu­able for test­ing and devel­op­ment envir­on­ments, offer­ing the chance to explore new fea­tures before their offi­cial release. Reg­u­lar means that the updates fol­low the stand­ard release schedule. 

Please note that the selec­ted update cycle is locked once the instance is cre­ated. Switch­ing to a dif­fer­ent update sched­ule will require cre­at­ing a new ser­vice instance and migrat­ing exist­ing content.

Con­nect to Remote Dat­ab­ricks Data Sources

A new con­nec­tion option for Dat­ab­ricks has been added to the list of pos­sible data sources. To enable this func­tion­al­ity, the data source must have remote con­nectiv­ity enabled, and the Data Gate­way must be installed and con­figured on the user’s PC with the Dat­ab­ricks driver. Then we will be able to cre­ate the con­nec­tion in OAC by nav­ig­at­ing to the top-right menu and select­ing Cre­ate > Connection:

Fig­ure 31: Cre­at­ing a connection

If everything’s been set up cor­rectly, we’ll be able to see the Dat­ab­ricks option in the new window:

Fig­ure 32: Choos­ing Dat­ab­ricks con­nec­tion type from the list

All the fields are ready to be filled in to cre­ate our new connection:

Fig­ure 33: Con­nec­tion inform­a­tion and Cre­den­tials window

After choos­ing the Advanced con­nec­tion type, we will be able to use a Con­nec­tion String field instead of the Host, Port, and Path fields. As we can see, the Use Remote Data Con­nectiv­ity check­box is uned­it­able, as this con­nec­tion type does not sup­port local data sources. 

Deploy Cus­tom Mod­els for Doc­u­ment Clas­si­fic­a­tion and Key Value Extraction

New meth­ods have been added to the AI Mod­els used in Flows. We can now deploy cus­tom-trained mod­els for Doc­u­ment Clas­si­fic­a­tion and Key Value Extrac­tion. To use these fea­tures, integ­ra­tion with OCI Doc­u­ment Under­stand­ing in OAC must be enabled by the instance administrator:

Fig­ure 34: Cre­at­ing a new Flow

Fig­ure 35: Apply AI Model to the Flow

These new mod­els allow us to scan images for data and to insert it into a desired table format. This fea­ture cur­rently sup­ports only Eng­lish, with other lan­guages hope­fully com­ing soon.

As para­met­ers, we need to provide a column con­tain­ing the images and spe­cify the Input Type. If the doc­u­ments are stored at a URL, the Input Type should be set to Buck­ets. Con­versely, if we ref­er­ence doc­u­ments indi­vidu­ally using a file loc­a­tion, the Input Type should be set to Doc­u­ments:

Fig­ure 36: Doc­u­ment scan parameters

AI Assist­ant

One of the most prom­ising fea­tures recently intro­duced in OAC is the AI Assist­ant tool, allow­ing users to enter ques­tions or com­mands in nat­ural lan­guage dur­ing Work­book con­struc­tion. The Assist­ant then gen­er­ates appro­pri­ate visu­al­isa­tions based on the data.

To enable the AI Assist­ant, we simply right-click on the data­set we want to use and select the Inspect option:

Fig­ure 37: Inspect option

In the pop-up win­dow, go to the Search sec­tion and select Assist­ant in the Index Data­set For option. A list of all the columns in the data­set will appear where we can con­fig­ure set­tings such as deselect­ing columns that we don’t want the Assist­ant to con­sider, or assign­ing syn­onyms to columns to make our com­mands more intu­it­ive. Once the con­fig­ur­a­tion is com­plete, save the data­set and click on the Run Now button:

Fig­ure 38: Enable Assist­ant and run AI model

When cre­at­ing a Work­book from the data­set, if we click on the Auto Insights but­ton and go to the Assist­ant tab, we will see the data­set being trained. We can click on Check Status to refresh the process:

Fig­ure 39: Assist­ant tab

Once the data­set has com­pleted the train­ing pro­cess, we can enter our ques­tions and com­mands into the text box:

Fig­ure 40: Assist­ant text box

The AI Assist­ant will gen­er­ate mul­tiple visu­al­iz­a­tions based on the ques­tion or com­mand entered. We can select any of them and drag and drop it to the canvas:

Fig­ure 41: Assist­ant res­ults and gen­er­ated visualisations

We can also click on the Addi­tional Insights but­ton to get more details about the visu­al­isa­tion, and even ask more spe­cific ques­tions about it:

Fig­ure 42: Look­ing at Addi­tional Insights about the gen­er­ated visualization

Fig­ure 43: Ask­ing the Assist­ant for more details about a visualization

Fig­ure 44: Ask­ing the Assist­ant spe­cific ques­tions about a visualization

This new tool accel­er­ates the pro­cess of devel­op­ing Work­books by provid­ing users with new ideas and insights on how to rep­res­ent their data, as well as allow­ing them to quickly pop­u­late a Work­book by simply drag­ging and drop­ping gen­er­ated visualizations.

Con­clu­sions

The Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud Novem­ber 2024 update intro­duces loads of fea­tures designed to per­son­al­ise our ana­lyt­ics exper­i­ence, stream­line data mod­el­ling, organ­ise con­tent more effi­ciently, and enhance secur­ity and con­trol. The AI Assist­ant, a fea­ture first intro­duced in the Septem­ber update, con­tin­ues to revolu­tion­ise how users inter­act with their data. Har­ness­ing the power of AI, we can auto­mate com­plex tasks, gen­er­ate action­able insights, and inter­act with data using nat­ural lan­guage. The AI Assist­ant also enhances pro­ductiv­ity by sim­pli­fy­ing the cre­ation of visu­al­isa­tions, uncov­er­ing hid­den pat­terns, and enabling a deeper explor­a­tion of data.

With this update, we can cre­ate cus­tom tem­plates, themes, and tool­tips to cre­ate dash­boards tailored to spe­cific needs, ensur­ing a more intu­it­ive user exper­i­ence. Data mod­el­ling is fur­ther sim­pli­fied by enabling seam­less con­nec­tions to diverse data sources. Organ­ising con­tent is enhanced through the use of cus­tom groups and improved nav­ig­a­tion, whilst robust secur­ity and access con­trols empower us to man­age who can view and edit our content.

These advance­ments solid­ify Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud as an indis­pens­able tool for ana­lys­ing and visu­al­ising data. By enabling the extrac­tion of valu­able insights and fos­ter­ing data-driven decision-mak­ing, this update elev­ates the poten­tial of ana­lyt­ics for users across all industries.

Here at ClearPeaks, our team of Oracle experts is ready to help you to make the most of the new­est OAC fea­tures. Whether it’s imple­ment­ing advanced AI, cus­tom­ising dash­boards, or optim­ising your data work­flows, we’re here to sup­port you on your jour­ney, so reach out to us today!