The Enterprise release features a set of report properties that I thought might be worth sharing. They provide some nice controls over the report behaviour.
- Run report online - do you want users to be able to run the report with the View button. Its a little tough this, for your period end tax report its a no brainer but for smaller reports. How long should a user have to wait for a report to render? 10 seconds is probably long enough right? I think that's our, Oracle standard. This might take a little bit of user experience to get it fined tuned. Of course there is that Cancel link while the report is running the user can click on. Before you ask, no we do not currently have the means to estimate running times for reports to inform the user as soon as possible that its going to take 25 mins!
- Show Controls - show or hide the report controls. this will hide all of the controls on the View Report page e.g. View button, template and output selectors. A little blunt and we are looking at giving you finer control.
- Show Report Links - I mentioned the Report Links functionality we added a while back. No sooner had we released it then folks wanted the ability to turn it off!
- Open Links in New Window - if you have built links to other reports in your template do you want to open them in the same window or a new one.
- Auto Run - As soon as the user clicks on the report do you want it to execute immediately? Maybe they need to select parameter values before the report is run?
- Enable document cache - With document cache enabled, when a user views the report online, the document (data plus layout) will be placed in cache. When the same user uses the online Report Viewer to view the exact same report (same layout, same output type, same parameter selections) the document will be retrieved from cache. The document will remain in cache according to the cache specifications set in BI Publisher's System Maintenance page. Scheduled reports do not use document cache.
- Disable Client Access from Analyzer for Excel - Leslie has jumped in here with the truth. Hold on to your hats cos this little checkbox does a lot:
Disable Client Access from Analyzer for Excel - this property controls the method by which report data is downloaded to Excel and also impacts the ability to interact with the BI Publisher server from Microsoft Excel. Turning this property on has the following effects:
- Your report data downloads faster and large data sets are handled more efficiently
- You do not have to enable macros
- You can enable your own custom macros
- You cannot log in or connect to the BI Publisher server from your Microsoft Excel session. Therefore you cannot upload a template directly from Excel, nor can you update the report parameters or apply a new template.
You would typically consider turning this property on for reports that generate very large data sets that you wish to manipulate in Excel.
There you have it - they'll be more coming Im sure - we take requests !
