BusinessObjects Board

Creating a Condition that will use NVL

building semantic layer
#1

Hi Experts,

I am trying to create a condition within B.O Designer X1 (3.1),
that will allow the user to be prompted for a Financial Week but if no prompt is selected then it will default to a value held in another object named ā€œLatestWeekā€. I know I can do this with a hard coded default value however the latest week will obviously change each week so Im hoping i can use an Object as the default.

Does anyone know how i can tackle this?

The purpose of this is to be used within a Dashboard so when the Dashboard (Xcelicus 2008) refreshes it will show the latest financial Periods, but also will allow for other financial periods to be selected at the userā€™s request (hence the prompt).

I hope this makes senseā€¦

Many thanks in advance you kind GURUs

:hb:

wlloyd (BOB member since 2008-10-14)

#2

As far as I know you cannot provide an Object as a default value :expressionless:
Checking the FAQ https://bobj-board.org/t/15227/19

nithya_raj (BOB member since 2007-02-03)

#3

Thanks for your reply, Iā€™ve noticed that Defaulting to another Object is not available from the G.U.I, do you know of other methods to achieve the following:

I want to use an optional prompt for a Financial Period but it will default to show the latest period if no value is passed.
This is seems to be another disapointing limitation from Business Objects.

As the idea of this is when a User opens a Dash or even a report, it will default to show the latest period, then the user only has to enter a financial period if they want to view historical periods.

Can anyone suggest a different method in order to achieve the same functionality?

Thanks againā€¦

wlloyd (BOB member since 2008-10-14)

#4

You could try this to set the latest date to todayā€™s date, sorry I do not have the tool in hand, so am not able to check.
Set the default value to a string called ā€˜Latest Dateā€™. Your where clause would look like

where Date_field = (case when @prompt('Date','A',,{'Latest Date'},,) = 'Latest Date' then sysdate() else @prompt('Date','A',,{'Latest Date'},,) end)

(Am not sure if you can use a case statement in a where clause.)

nithya_raj (BOB member since 2007-02-03)

#5

Its a nice idea Raj, but the latest date is actual a number i.e latest year = 2011 and latest week = 7 (financial periods). I think iā€™m probably trying to over engineer this.

The users will have to live with completing the prompts for now, until Business Objects allows for Defaulting to an object within prompts. I believe this can be done by using JSP, passing the latest periods via a script in the URL but this is a whole new world to meā€¦

Thanks again for your input!

wlloyd (BOB member since 2008-10-14)