The Challenge
In a previous post I showed a way to create the illusion of an alerter on a chart using the full client product. In this post I will reuse the same technique with a slight twist so that it works in Web Intelligence as well. If you have not already read Part I please do so first so you will be familiar with the basic steps for this technique.
Here is a summary of the steps that I used to solve this in Business Objects:
- Create two versions of the chart: one green and one red
- Create a variable that shows the trend of the data
- Use the Hide Block feature of Business Objects to keep one of the charts from being displayed
- Position both charts in exactly the same space, providing the illusion that the chart is changing colors based on the data
This is all fine… but Web Intelligence does not have the “hide block” feature. So how do I solve this issue?
Continue reading “Alerters On Charts Part II”
The Challenge
Officially there is no way to put an alerter on a chart. Yet some time back I was challenged by a client to create a line chart that was green if the overall trend was up, and red if the overall trend was down. This chart appeared in a sectioned report so there was a different chart for each section value. Possible? It turns out that there was an answer that works. With minor changes it works in both the desktop and the web products as well.
The eFashion database and universe are used in this demonstration.
Continue reading “Alerters on Charts: Part I”
If you have been to the Integra Solutions web site and looked at their presentations page, or if you have been to one of the many Business Objects conferences that I have presented at over the years, you may have seen one of my “Variables” presentations. The very first one was in 1997 at the conference in New Orleans. And believe it or not, it was the presentation that almost wasn’t. 🙂
Continue reading “Variables and More Variables”
The Challenge
It is not uncommon for a report writer to want to know how many items were selected from a prompt. The challenge is that there really isn’t a way to do that, at least not one that is available as a function. So this article will show an interesting way to solve that challenge. It is not my original idea; it came from a post on BOB. At the moment I cannot find the post in order to give credit to the original author.
In a nutshell what is required is as follows:
- Capture the user’s response to the prompt
- Count the number of semi-colon characters found in that string
Continue reading “How many values were picked from a list?”
