Smart View and multiple pods, how can I simplify connections?

With the shift to the cloud, one of the major differences with Smart View is the shared connection url. When it was on-prem it was pointed to my production workspace servers and all of the environments connections were available to me as a shared connection. I really only needed to change it if I wanted to work in development or test.

Now that most of my clients are moving to the cloud they are struggling with connecting to environments that have multiple pods. Oracle has given us the ability to combine the web front end via Connections but that will not yet work for Smart View. Yes, clients can define multiple Private Connections within Smart View but I think that naming those connections can be challenging to end users. I really like this approach as it provides an intuitive way of identifying the connections to the end users. Here is a sample of it in action.

I know that video was very very exciting, I hope you enjoyed it! Yes, you did see me utilize a shared connection to log in only once and ad-hoc to three different pods with nice friendly names! How did I do this? I utilized an on-prem solution and converted it to the cloud. Take a look at the following from the Smart View documentation:

Accessing Shared Connections from an XML File

I used this solution and applied it to the cloud to create a friendly Shared Connection experience. Here is an example of the syntax for what you just saw with edited domain names.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<res_GetProvisionedDataSources>
<Product id="HP" name="HP-11.1.2.2" displayVersion="version">
<Server name="PLANNING_PROD" context="https://planning-a123.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning/SmartView"></Server>
</Product>
<Product id="HP" name="HP-11.1.2" displayVersion="version">
<Server name="PLANNING_TEST" context="https://planning11-a123.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning/SmartView"></Server>
</Product>
<Product id="HP" name="HP-11.1.2" displayVersion="version">
<Server name="REPORTING_TESTING" context="https://planning23-test-a123.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning/SmartView"></Server>
</Product>
<Product id="HP" name="HP-11.1.2" displayVersion="version">
<Server name="REPORTING_UAT" context="https://planning19-test-a123.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning/SmartView"></Server>
</Product>
<Product id="HP" name="HP-11.1.2" displayVersion="version">
<Server name="REPORTING_PROD" context="https://planning3-a123.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning/SmartView"></Server>
</Product>
</res_GetProvisionedDataSources>

I then saved it as an XML file and defined a path to it in Smart View.

In the above example I am accessing it via a local file, however, clients should probably host this file in a central location on an internal web server and reference the file via URL so that everyone can get updates. I have tried hosting it in workspace but you need to login to access the file and that defeats the purpose of the connection so I would go with the URL hosting or make the file part of a deployment package.

I hope this helps clients struggling to maintain multiple pods and Smart View connections. It has saved me so much time as I have a single file for all of my clients within one shared connection profile!