user session & user stored cubes to help with user experience

Nicolas CHIGROS

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.##