It should show a top five of customers (with highest revenues), comparing a year that can be selected in a prompt (when refreshing the report) with the year before that. This is what the report should look like when we select 2006.



1 QUERY

First version I created has only one query;

• I select three objects: [Year], [ Customer] and [Revenue]
• One query filter with a prompt to select a year:

This is the result of that query:

Convert this report to crosstab (right click; Turn To/Crosstab):

We only want to see the last two years.  The first idea was to select the cell and just put a ranking on it (using the ranking icon), but this is not the best way; we will need to add another rank (to show only the top 5 customers) and this way of ranking will only allow you to add one rank per table.  Another way of handling ranking is by creating a new variable.  Let’s call this “Ranking Year”:

[Ranking Year] = Rank([Year];[Year])

These are the values of the variable:

Now we can create a filter (make sure the table is selected as you do this) to only show the last two years:

To filter the report to only see the top five of customers, we work in the same way:

[Ranking Customer] = Rank([Revenue];[Customer])

We put a descending sort on [Year] to first show the most recent year.

This is what we have so far:

Now we want one line unther this showing a sum of all other customers (So a grand total without the top 5).  Copy the table we have and paste below the one we have.  We will start working from this copy.  We select this bottom table and change the filter on [Ranking Customer] to Greater than or Equal to 6.  This way we get a list of all customers (excl. top 5).  To just show the sum we will fold the report.  Folding the report can be done this way;

• Click the icon Show/Hide Fold-Unfold
• Select the bottom table, and click on the little blue arrow on the left: 

• Now we only see the header (values 2006 and 2005), which we don’t need to see.  But we can not delete the year because we want the data split up by year, so instead of replacing year by sum([Revenue]) we will keep the year and put an alerter that will show the Sum of the revenue instead of the year; Select the header and click the alerter icon:

Give the allerter a name, and a condition that will always be met (Year Not Equal to 1).  Then click Format.

Enter the formula =Sum([Revenue]) under Display and change the Color to black.

• Copy the formating of the top report and put “Other” in the cel left of the values:

Result:

• Now we can move the bottom report up against the top one to make it look like it’s one report.

Now, to get a extra row with a grand total, we copy the one we just added and paste it at the bottom.  We select this row (wich is actually a table) and remove the ranking customer filter:



To get the correct evolution, I used following formula:

=([Revenue] Where( [Year]=Max([Year] In Report))-[Revenue] Where( ToNumber([Year])=ToNumber(Max([Year] In Report))-1))/([Revenue] Where( [Year]=Max([Year] In Report)))

Ad following alerter:

2 QUERIES

The Second version has two queries;

We will create two identical queries, but with different prompt, so the user can descide which two years he wants to compare.

We start of with the same query as the first version, but the query filter is slightly different:

• First query:
  • I select three objects: [Year], [ Customer] and [Revenue]
  • Promp:

• The second Query can be a copy of the first one, but the prompt should be different.  In this example I have used following prompts: in the first query Enter Year 1:, in the second Enter Year 2:.
• For a clean way of working (and to make it more clear while in report view) rename the queries to ‘Year 1’ and ‘Year 2’

This is the result when values 2005 and 2006 were filled in in the prompts:

The Revenue that is shown is the one from query ‘Year 2’, which is why the revenue isn’t filled in for 2005.  We delete the column Year and add the a column to the left of the revenue with following object: [Year 1].[Revenue].  Now It should look like this:

In the header we would like to see the to Years that were selected in the prompts.  For this we use the following formula’s:

• =UserResponse(“Enter Year 2:”)
• =UserResponse(“Enter Year 1:”)

Again we use a variable to get only the top 5:

• [Ranking Customer] =Rank([Year 2].[Revenue];[Customer])
• Select table and create filter on [Ranking Customer] (using the filter toolbar):

Now the report should look like this:

To get the sum of the other clients under this report, just start by copying and pasting the report.  Then change the filter for this report to Greater than: 5.  Now put a sum on the revenues, using the sum icon

Fold the report like it’s done in the first version and delete the header.

Now copy and past this report (that shows only one line) and delete the filter to get a grand total.

The formula to get the evolution is quite simple for this one:

=([Year 2].[Revenue]-[Year 1].[Revenue])/[Year 2].[Revenue]

REMARK: In this 2^nd version it is important that the year selected in the prompt of query 1 is lower than the one selected in query 2, so maybe the promp text should be modified to make clear to the user of the report which year should be fild in in which prompt (something like ‘most recent year: ‘ instead of ‘Year 2:’)

If the user insists on using 1 prompt (like in the first version of te report), you can do this by manually changing the SQL:

• First change the prompts of the 2 queries so they are exactly the same.
• Manually change the SQL of the first query :
• Select Use custom SQL
• In the SQL statement, add ‘-1’ to the following line:

Format(Sales.invoice_date,’YYYY’)  =  @prompt(‘Enter Year:’,'A’,'Sales\Year’,Mono,Free,Persistent,,User:0)-1

That should do the trick.

This can be done in the CMC, under ‘Servers’.

This works fine and dandy until I have a value with a somewhat strange character. The problem popped up with the é. Don’t know about you, but where I live, this character is quite common. When I look at the value that was filled in in the prompt of the target report, this character was replaced by “Asc(é)”. Of course this resulted in an empty report .

The solution was given to me by a colleague. In fact we struggled together on this for a while, and while I was on the toilet he found following solution: URLEncode(), as simple as that.

Comes to show that sitting on the can can bring inspiration, even if it doesn’t to yourself.

Building Reports Using the Java Report Panel

Information about Hyperlinks starts at page 675

This is what the chart looked like when first created:

 Off course this is useless; it’s impossible to compare the figures of last year with those of this year.  The lines should appear on top of each other.

To achieve this I created a new object in the universe called “Week-Year (Next Year)” with following definition:

CONVERT(char(4),CONVERT(int,substring(@Select(Time\Year-Week), 1, 4))+1)+ ‘-’ + CASE WHEN substring(@Select(Time\Year-Week), 6, 2) < 10 THEN ’0′ +SUBSTRING(@Select(Time\Year-Week), 7, 1) ELSE SUBSTRING (@Select(Time\Year-Week), 6, 2) END

This object shows the same data as the ‘Year-Week’ object but adds 1 year (a lot of code for a simple result, I know, but that’s besides the point). 

Putting both objects next to each other, results in this:

In a new query I select the volume and the new object ‘Week-Year (Next Year)’, which I link to object ‘Year-Week’ of the original query and tadaaaa:

A cleaner workaround in my opinion (and one that is usable in a chart) is one I learned from a collegaue, a few days ago.  Using an alerter on the column you wish to hide (lets say we want to hide [City]), you can make a non sense condition that is allways true ([City] <> “Shitville”, for instance) and tell webi that if the condition is met, to show the object you wish to show.  Now just make sure the format is the same and Bob’s your uncle.

I’ve been working with BO for about ten years now.  Recently I changed job.  I’m still a BO consultant, but now for a new company.  And today I decided to keep a blog, to keep track of (and document) what I’m working on.  Maybe I’ll come across some problems and find solutions that might be helpful for someone, and maybe (just maybe), with a little help from a search engine, that someone will come across this blog.