ReportStudio Prompts - choose ALL

[CognosAdmn]

Hello All,

I created a Dashboard report which has some buttons that link to other reports. I am having troubles with one of these reports.

This is a crosstab report which displays the quantity of products (in measure field) by ProductType, ProductSubType, Location, ProductName (nested rows) and by FiscalYear and Month (as nested Columns).

The report has 3 dropdown prompts for ProductType, ProductSubType and Location. Since we have only about 3 ProductTypes, 10 ProductSubTypes and 2 Locations, I manually entered the static choices and created a "IF ELSE THEN" statement in the filters for each dropdown prompt.  The report works well if we choose any ONE ProductType, ProductSubType and Location. Now I am trying to include the ability to choose all ProductTypes, ProductSubTypes or Location. This could be easily accomplished if I choose Multi-Select=Yes. But the requirement is that it has to be a dropdown box, to keep consistency with other existing reports. So I added another static choice for "All" and included that in the if else statement.

The problem is that it works fine if I am running the report from Report Studio.
But if I am running it via the link button in the main report, I am getting this error message:


RSV-SRV-0003
       The report specification contains an error at line ' 1', column ' 3,255'.

Also, when the report is run from Report Studio, I am seeing a prompt page, even though, I did not create a prompt page and the prompts are in the report page. This page asks me to provide a value: for each prompt. After providing a value, the OK button at the bottom gets enabled. After clicking OK, I can see the report that I created with the prompts selected from the intial prompt page.

My questions are: 1. How can I get rid of this initial prompt page.
2. How can I allow the users to choose ALL ProductType, ALL ProductSubType and/or ALL Locations?

Thank you for reading thus far and for any assistance.

Shaam

[cognosjon]

 1. How can I get rid of this initial prompt page.
is the report set as a drill-through report, it sounds as though it isn't?

concerning number 2 could you not make the prompt optional so that it will always return all by default, just a training issue for end users

[CognosAdmn]

Thank you for your reply Jon.

This report is not exactly set as a drill-through report. The Main report, which is the dashboard, has a 'Hyperlink Button' set to this report. I am not drilling down from the Main report's query items. I hope this answers your question.

I like your idea for my second question. But since I entered the values as static choices, would Cognos include all values by default? I'll give this a shot. Thank you for the great tip Jon.  :)

[CognosAdmn]

Jon, making the prompt optional solved both my problems. I dont get the initial prompt page anymore.

Thank you for leading me in the right direction.

Shaam.