Getting BIPublisher Desktop for PeopleSoft to work properly

Although BIPublisher Desktop is currently at level 11.1.1.5, PeopleTools is still shipped and embedded with BIPublisher 10.1.3.4. I stumbled into irritating errors after installing BIPublisher Desktop om my desktop, which used to work fine for me in the past. After installing BIPublisher Desktop on Windows 7 with MS Office 2007, I could nicely see the BIPublisher add in menu in the ribbon, but half the action buttons returned the same error :

The macro cannot be found or has been disabled because of your macro security settings.

Even after enabling all macro, setting trusted locations, this error kept popping up when trying to add an Repeating Group of Chart. Reading tons of posts stating registry hacks, deleting files with exd extensions, this still did not correct my issue.

Well, sometimes when software or hardware doesn't work as it should, it is best to start reading the installation manual and release notes. The installation manual states the following requirements for BIPublisher Desktop:

Operating System

• Windows 2000
• Windows Server 2003 SP1 (32-bit only)
• Windows XP SP2 and later
• Windows Vista

Template Builder for Word add-in

• Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007

Requires:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Java Runtime or JDK 1.4 or later

The main reason why I was hitting this error, was that my desktop was installed with MS .Net Framework 3.5, which is embedded in Windows 7 OS. So after installing Windows XP (on a virtual machine), I downloaded the latest version of Java and installed .Net Framework 2.0.

.Net Framework 2.0 install files are shipped with the installation of BIPublisher. You can find the install files in default installation directory of BIPublisher:

C:Program FilesOracleBI PublisherBI Publisher DesktopDotNetInstallFiles

Add the templates TemplateBuilder.dot, TBCrosstab.dot and WordAnlayzer.dot (default location c:) to your RTF file.

And do not forget to disable Automatic Updates of Windows, because this will update .Net Framework to 3.5 and you will be hitting the same error again.

After this I was able to use all the features of BIPublisher Desktop. The question is when will Oracle update BIPublisher Desktop for PeopleSoft to it's latest version. Not many of us are using Windows XP anymore ...