Active Reporting - Dropdown Coordination

[cdbrissey]

Hey guys,

I'm working on an active report that involves a list that is controlled by two dropdowns.

The first dropdown filters a list by Line of Business.  The second dropdown filters the list by Agent.  Both dropdowns have an "All" selection.

The first dropdown filters the list and also filters the second dropdown to only include Agents that are in the selected Line of Business.







Here is where I am running into an issue:

1.  I select a Line of Business. (first dropdown) 
          Result:  The list is filtered for that Line of Business and the Agent dropdown is filtered to only include Agents for that Line of Business.



2.  I select an Agent. (second dropdown)
          Result:  The list is filtered to only include that Agent.





Step 1 and 2 are working as expected.  The problem I am running into is when I go to change the Line of Business after selecting an Agent.

3.  I change the Line of Business dropdown to a different value. (first dropdown)
          Result:  The Agent dropdown is set to "All" and the list has no rows.




The result I am hoping for from step 3 is that the Agent dropdown will return to "All" and the list will display data for all Agents in the new Line of Business selection.



NOTE:  I've censored the screenshots to remove sensitive data.


Does anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong here?

Thanks,
Chris

[AnalyticsWithJay]

Does anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong here?

I can best explain this with an example:

Dropdown 1 = State
Values = California, New York

Dropdown 2 = City
Values = Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City

You select California in Dropdown 1, and Dropdown 2 is filtered with LA and SF. You select Los Angeles in Dropdown 2. The list is then filtered accordingly.

You then select New York in Dropdown 1, which triggers interactivity with the list. The variable still contains Los Angeles from Dropdown 2. So the list tries to filter on New York and Los Angeles as the city, which returns no data of course.

When you set your variable in Dropdown 1, make sure you reset your Dropdown 2 variable, or set it to All.

On a related note, the debug information in active reports is very useful. Right click and "Show Variables" can help troubleshoot your issues when you're stuck.

[cdbrissey]

Thanks, Jay.

That is exactly what I am attempting to do. 

How do I go about resetting the variable (or setting the variable back to all) within Cognos?


I don't have Debug mode available as I am in an advanced report authoring user role, but I will request that debug logging is added.


Thank you for your help.
Chris

[AnalyticsWithJay]

How do I go about resetting the variable (or setting the variable back to all) within Cognos?

On Dropdown 1, in the Interactive Behavior dialog window, edit 'Set Variable Values'. Find the variable for Agent, select 'Type in a value...', and type in 'All'.

Cheers,
Jay

[cdbrissey]

This is working now.  Thank you for all of your help.

I had the two 'All' values actually containing the "No Value List Item."

I had tried typing in 'All' on the variable set before, but the variable value isn't actually "All", it is No Value.

Thanks so much for the help.  I really appreciate it.

Chris

[AnalyticsWithJay]

This is working now.  Thank you for all of your help.

I had the two 'All' values actually containing the "No Value List Item."

I had tried typing in 'All' on the variable set before, but the variable value isn't actually "All", it is No Value.

Thanks so much for the help.  I really appreciate it.

Chris

Oh ok, so you set it to "Empty" instead? Great. My pleasure!

[cdbrissey]

Oh ok, so you set it to "Empty" instead? Great. My pleasure!

Yep!  Sorry if this question was simple, but version 11.0.5 is much different.

I had the option set to 'empty' in version 11.0.4 and the result was not the same.

I had to delete the controls and add them back after our upgrade for the 'empty' setting to work.  I'm not certain of the reason behind this, but I'm glad it is fixed now.

I appreciate all of your help.  All of the internets to you.

Thanks,
Chris