Overview

Report Options provide users with an easy way to create and configure filters that can be used throughout the report and enable users to set filter parameters when the report is run. 

Report Options can be added for any field in the Data Model and can also be configured to use default values or be disabled when the report is run, if desired.

Details

Adding Report Options is an easy way to add a lot of flexibility to a report. By incorporating Report Options, the Report Editor can make it easy for users to define the filters that they want to set when running a report.

Report options are inherited, when relevant, by new functions that are added to the report. Because of this it is strongly suggested that adding Report Options be one of the first steps when creating a new report. If Report Options are added later, it won't hurt the report but all the functions that need to reference the new Report Option will need to be updated manually by the user.

Adding Report Options

To add a Report Option to a report, the user will navigate to the Report Options section of the Cosmos Report Editor and click the Add Report Option button.

The user will then be shown a list of all tables and fields in the Data Model. After selecting the desired field a Report Option will be created. 

In the example below, a Report Option was added based on the Year field in the Date table.

The Default Operator and Default Value enables the user to set a value that will initially be populated when the report is run normally or through a Report Preview. The Default Operator represents the operator that will be used, by default, when the report is run, and the Default Value represents the value that all users will see by default when running the report. The Default Value is optional. Based on the example above, setting the default value to "2022" in the Report Options section will automatically populate that default into the Report Preview tab in the Cosmos Report Editor.

Additional settings for Report Options are covered below.

Function Section

Name: The name of the function. This should be a short, descriptive name to enable the user or other users to know what the function does.

List Type: 

• Standard List: This will return the list of values that are available for the Report Option based on the standard filters that are defined for the Report Option function.
• Custom List: This will return the list of values that are available for the Report Option in a specific order based on the order that the Report Editors enters them. The values entered must still exist in the Data Model to be valid. 

Table: Represents the table that the function will pull its list of values from.

Field: Represents the field that values will be looked up from when the report is run. The user can click the dropdown and select a different field to be returned. If the Field is changed the user should remember to also rename the function, if relevant, to avoid confusion around the function name returned in the cell the function is located in.

Filters Section

The Filters selection enables the Report Editor to define which values will be available to the user running the report when they look up the Report Options. For example, if the Report Editor only wanted the report to be ran for the USA and Canada they could add a filter for Country Code and then enter these values, which would be the only values that the user could select when running the report.

Filter Field: The field in the table that the filter will be applied to. The user can filter on any field in the existing table as well as any field in any related table. More details on working with filters can be found in the article below:

Working with Report Filters

Operator: The operator that will be applied to the filter. Possible options include things like =, <>, >, <, etc.

Filter Value: This is the filter value that the user wants to apply to the filter. The user can enter a value manually and press Enter, the user can click the dropdown to select a Range List to dynamically filter on, or the user can click the dropdown and select "Empty" to tell the function to only return results where the field is empty.

Deleting a Report Option

To delete a Report Option the user should navigate to the Report Options section in the Cosmos Report Editor and click the Delete button in the lower-right hand corner of the Report Option to delete.