The idea is to have cube where the user is dimension managed automatically by Board and invisible to the user himself as it set on himself (@user) for everyone. The purpose is to improve user experience by remembering his choice and his preference.
I can see at least to useful variation :
- User session are cleared when user disconnect,
- User stored are stored permanently
Use case :
In my last project, users expressed the need for the application to remember which year and which previous forecast they had selected and wanted to use as a comparison to the current version. They also needed to keep it as default for them self in a bunch of other screens. And preferably it was better if it was remembered when they reconnect to the application.
The workaround, and why you should not use it :
What we've done was to create a replicated dimension named contributor_settings of our user dimension named contributor that was used for security purposed and added in "Security / Database Security / <our base> " the following script:
set contributor_settings=@user
However you have the following issues :
- "run as administrator" won't be available in procedure after that for administrator if you use this script.
- Dynamic selection based on a cube in the "Security / Database Security / <our base> / Data Selection" menu won't work anymore as you used a security script.
This is a huge blow to this solution, as most application won't be able to use it!
Conclusion :
Compared to other tools on the market, Board has very few integrated tool to help customize the user experience from user to another. I think this features would be a step in the right direction to help with that.##
