Overview

When a Report Editor is creating or making modifications to a report, it can be helpful to periodically run the report after making changes to ensure that the result is in line with what the user is looking for. 

This article will discuss how to preview a report while editing it.

Details

When creating or modifying a report, a user with the Report Editor role assigned to them can run a preview of what the finished report will look like. This can be useful to ensure that any changes look and feel the way that the user wants them to before publishing the report for other users to consume.

How to Preview a Report

To preview a report, the user will navigate to the Authoring tab in the Excel ribbon.

This tab contains all the information that the user will need to run the preview. 

Preview: The Preview button will run the report with the current set of filters. Once the report is done running, a new browser tab will open with the finished version of the report for the viewer to inspect.

Re-run Preview: The Re-run Preview button will re-run the last version of the report that was last previewed.  Once the report is done running, a new browser tab will open with the finished version of the report for the viewer to inspect.

Open Last Preview: The Open Last Preview button will open the report that was last previewed. 

Cancel Running Preview: The Cancel Running Preview button will cancel the current preview that is running. Canceling a preview can take a few seconds because Cosmos cancels the preview once the current step has completed. 

Setting Preview Filters

When the user clicks on the Preview button, a Preview Report window will open in the Task Pane. 

Any default values set for the Report Options will automatically be set. If the user wishes to run the preview version without using one of the filters, the user can click the Enabled toggle to disregard the Report Option; that report option will not be used when the preview run is generated. 

The user can adjust any of the filters on the Preview tab based on standard filtering operations that are covered in more detail in the article here: Working with Filters.