How to add multimedia object to a OBIEE Dashboard
Leveraging the container “embedded content”, in general we can incorporate into our dashboards any web page. Starting from this idea, we can also see a movie or play a sound file inside the dashboard.
First we need a webserver (which is IIS, Apache or any other) and put the file with the video to be displayed in the document root of the web server. At this point, assuming that our video file is called video.mp4, we create a simple html file with this code:
<html>
<body>
<embed src="video.mp4" width="640" height="480" CONTROLLER="true" LOOP="false" AUTOPLAY="false"></embed>
</body>
</html>
Save the file and name it video.html.
Modify our dashboard and add the widget “Incorporated Content”. Change the URL property by entering the address with which to reach the html page you just created:
In this way the web page that displays the media player of the video will be incorporated in our dashboard, giving the effect of playing the video directly from the dashboard:
Unfortunately, this play mode does not work with mobile devices such as iPad or iPhone, so if you have distributed your dashboards using the Oracle BI Mobile app, you have to follow an alternative route.
First make sure you have the video file in a format that is supported by Apple devices (eg m4v or mov). There are several free converter that can help you with that. We will have to once again lean to the external webserver on which to place the file with the movie and create the usual web page with this content (we will use the video tag in HTML 5):
<video width="640" height="480" controls="true"> <source src="video.m4v" /> </video>
Now we use the dashboard widget “Action Link”:
to add a text link to the page you just created.
When you log in to the Dashboard from the mobile application, clicking the link will open directly on the reproduction of the desired movie.
