Oracle EBS: Hiding Import Spreadsheet/Export Spreadsheet in Oracle Internet Expenses

So your company wants to implement a web-only version of Oracle Internet Expenses (i.e. no off-line completing expenses in Excel). The problem is that whenever a user logs into OIE they are presented with three buttons; Create Expense Report, Import Spreadsheet, and Export Spreadsheet (see below)

Figure 1: Expense Report Buttons (default view)

You'll notice that there are a lot of "personalize" links in Figure 1. In order to turn on personalisation you need to following the instructions in my "Changing Justification to Description" blog to update the system profile setting (click here).

In order to start the Personalization process click "Personalize Page" (top right):

Figure 2: Personalize Page

This screen shows you all the options you have when personalizing the screen. There are a lot of them. In order to find the one of we want to alter press Ctrl-F (Internet Explorer/ Firefox "Find") and enter "Import" as shown below:

Figure 3: Internet Explorer Find Dialog

After you click "Next" it will jump to the bottom of the screen and display:

Figure 4: Button Settings

As you can probably just make out from the screen shot (isn't the resizing in Blogger terrible?!) there are options for two buttons; "Button: Import Spreadsheet", and "Button: Export Spreadsheet". Click on the little pencil (edit) in the first line:

Figure 5: Available Personalization Options

Whilst this screen looks complicated it really isn't. What you basically have is options down the left side and across the top you have permission levels. You can change the settings just for you, for all users of your company, for all users of the site, for all users of the system, etc. Wherever you see "Inherit" the option is "use the default".

The bit we need to change is "Rendered". At the moment this is set to "true", we need to change this to "false". However, when you make the change a "warning" will appear that is usefully titled "Error" (just to really worry you):

Figure 6: Error when Changing Rendered Property (really a warning)

What this telling you is that if there are any children for the object you are making invisible they will be made invisible to. For buttons there aren't any children so this error is really just to put the wind up you and doesn't really have any effect.

Now you've made the change for this button, make the change for the other button and then go back to the Expenses page and as if by magic both buttons will be gone.