Active Reports prompting

[pkrishnaq]

Hello there,
Is there a way in Active Reports to let the user enter a value (text box prompt) , so that AR can calculate a certain column. I do not want to use the prompt page.
I have tried everything , but cant seem to find the solution.

any help would be great.
Thanks.

[MMcBride]

I don't this will be easy, possibly not possible at all.

An Active Report takes data you have gathered and stores it as MIME HTML a web archive called mht format.

This is now seperate from Cognos in all ways. What you are asking to do is to take a value and recalculate it based on value after this Web Archive is processed.

You might be able to build a Javascript aray, Embed the array within your report and then build a default value for this array. Then may be able to once again embed javascript that allows you to accept an dynamic value and then re-process the MHT file.

Honestly I don't think you could do it...

At IOD this year they talked about the ability in the future of accepting variables from outside of the MHT to support integrating AR objects to non-AR objects within Business Insight - but I think thats a way out yet...

Though there may be other options.

For example if you wanted to give what if type scenerios you could prebuild a +/- 20% Data Item then you could build an AR that would allow a user to scale along this value using one of the new Sliders in 10.1.1 for Active Reports. The trouble here could be size though. Say you have a Bar Chart and you want to be able to use +/- 20. Building it this way would pre-build 41 different charts taking up alot of space. If you had nothing else on the AR this would be fine but if this is just one of many components your Active Report would end up being huge...

Not only does the Data set need to be "Medium to Small" you also need to be very cognizant of the number of objects that will be built as this can have a large impact on the size as well.

[MMcBride]

I just re-read this and wanted to add another thing regarding the size :)

So the example I gave is 41 Charts - actually within AR this is a small number but lets say you also wanted to look at 5 different Product Lines. So you have a Data Item that lets you change Bar chart by each business unit - with the "What if" scenerio you just jumped up to 205 Charts being build and embedded into your Active Report.

Now lets you say you want to view these 5 Product Lines by 5 Regions.

now we are up to 1025 Chart objects to build and store in the MHT file...

Not so small anymore... and we are still looking at a very simple Active Report...
Without the "What if +/-20%" we are only looking at storing 25 different Charts... so a huge difference for relatively small gain.

[pkrishnaq]

Thanks for the quick response,MMcBride !!
Yes, I am actually looking into building a  Javascript code.

I did try constructing an excel file so that I could import it. But this will account to thousands of rows and is very painstaking. I shall keep you posted.

[MFGF]

At IOD this year they talked about the ability in the future of accepting variables from outside of the MHT to support integrating AR objects to non-AR objects within Business Insight - but I think thats a way out yet...

I would imagine this will be to integrate with Business Insight filters - Select Value and Slider, which are currently ignored by Active Reports within Business Insight. Just a guess though.

Cheers!

MF.

[MMcBride]

MF.

They are related.
You could use Active Report Components including one of the new 10.1.1 AR sliders with other AR objects. - With this it is all about naming it identical etc.

So if you have a AR component and an AR Slider on a Business Insight Dashboard as seperate objects they will still work. But if you have pull in a Chart from Business Insight Advanced - even if it has the same identical name for a paremeter they won't communicate.

The demo's they had at IOD were really pretty cool, and they include the AR specs in the samples.
Now I just need to find out where they are hiding them on the IBM website :)

They did one presentation during the Deep Dive on Best Practices for building Active reports - but instead of using a PowerPoint Slide they used an Active Report - once again really fun stuff to work with.

[MFGF]

If you're struggling to get the demo AR specs, drop me a line and I will see what I can do.

Cheers!

MF.