Search Parameters and Additional Parameters

When creating, you can specify two types of parameters before running a report:

Search Parameters

Search parameters allow the report runner to filter the data that gets sent to BI Publisher. For example, a Contract Report may need to be filtered by Vendor or Contract Type. A Ball-in-court report may be filtered for a specific task assignee, or task type.

At runtime, the report runner can select or multi-select from a list of values based on the search parameters specified in the report configuration. This means that Unifier basically runs the Data View before the report is run to give the report runner a list of the SQL results. He can then select or multi-select values from this initial run to filter what will appear in the report output. For more information on the Search Parameters, see "Add query parameters to custom report (Query tab)" in the Unifier Help.

Example

The following are instructions for filtering your Invoices Report on Invoice Vendor:

  1. Sign in to Unifier as a Company Administrator and go to the Company tab (Company Workspace), ensure that you are in Administration mode > Configuration > Custom Reports.
  2. Put your Invoices Custom Report in Draft mode and open the report.
  3. Click on the Query tab.
  4. Click Add.
  5. Populate the field as follows:
    • Element Name: VENDOR
    • Label: Vendor
    • Operator: Equals
    • Source Type: View
    • Select View: Invoices
    • Value Column: VENDOR
    • Label Column: VENDOR
    • Selection Type: Multiple
  6. Click OK to add the Query.
  7. Click OK to save your changes.
  8. Publish the report.

    Note: You can only add queries on your Main View (not Sub Report Views).

Upon running the report, the report runner display the Invoice Query window. When you click Select, Unifier runs the Data View that you selected (Invoices) to get a list of all the VENDORS that would be returned if there were not filters. Multi-select your Vendors by using the Ctrl key. Enter text in your report to indicate that it was run using a query. We can access the value specified by the report runner via a top-level field.

Additional Parameters

Additional parameters allow the report runner to specify parameters that can be used at report runtime to alter how the data is displayed.

Unlike Search Parameters:

A good example of where to use Additional Parameters is for calculations, for example, when you enter a target future exchange rate. You can also use Additional Parameters for conditional highlighting so that only rows over/under a certain value are highlighted.

Note: In the section Conditional Formatting, You need to hard-code a value (for example, 10,000).

The following are instructions for conditionally highlighting Invoices based on amount in our Invoices Report:

  1. Sign in to Unifier as a Company Administrator and go to the Company tab (Company Workspace), ensure that you are in Administration mode > Configuration > Custom Reports.
  2. Put your Invoices Custom Report in Draft mode and open the report.
  3. Click the Parameters tab.
  4. Click Add.
  5. Populate the field as follows:
    • Row: 0
    • Editable: [Select]
    • Hidden: [Do not select]
    • Name: Amount
    • Label: Highlight Amount
    • Default: 10000

      Note: When running the report, the selections add parameter called ‘Amount’, with label ‘Highlight Amount’ and an editable value of 10000 in the Additional Parameters box.

  6. Click OK to save your changes.
  7. Publish the report.

If you run the report at this stage, you see no changes because unlike Search Parameters, all the same data is passed to BI Publisher. You need to add some additional logic to your RTF template to use this new ‘Amount’ parameter.

  1. Sign in to Unifier as a Company Administrator and go to the Company tab (Company Workspace), ensure that you are in Administration mode > Configuration > Custom Reports.
  2. Put your Invoices Custom Report in Draft mode and open the report.
  3. Download the new Sample Data for your project. A new top-level parameter is generated in your Sample XML: <uuu_p_Amount>10000</uuu_p_Amount>
  4. Open your RTF template and import the new Sample XML file so you can add the logic.
  5. Define a new variable somewhere at the top (as we did in Defining the Variables) as follows: <?variable@begin:uuu_p_Amount;(.//uuu_p_Amount)[1]?>

To use the variable, you can call $uuu_p_Amount instead of your hard-coded 10000 in our conditional statement (assuming you already followed the instructions in Conditional Formatting).

  1. Double-click on the ‘C’ Conditional Formatting field that you added to the Amount cell in the Conditional Formatting section
  2. Ensure that you see the following on the Advanced tab: <?if@row:number(INV_AMOUNT)>10000?><?attribute@incontext:background-color;'#F8DADB'?><?end if?>
  3. Replace the ‘10000’ with ‘$uuu_p_Amount ‘: <?if@row:number(INV_AMOUNT)>$uuu_p_Amount?><?attribute@incontext:background-color;'#F8DADB'?><?end if?>
  4. Click OK.

If you run the report, you see the same behavior as before because the value in your Sample XML is the same as the value you hard-coded before (10000).To test:

  1. Open the Sample XML file that you have downloaded (in notepad) and update the value of uuu_p_Amount to a value lower (for example, 5000).
  2. Save the XML file and re-run the report. The Invoices over $5,000 are now highlighted in red.
  3. Upload the new RTF template into your Custom Report in Unifier.
  4. Click OK to save your changes.
  5. Publish the report.
  6. Proceed to test the Custom Report in Unifier. Since the 'Amount’ parameter is editable, you can update the parameter before running the report.

Related Topics

Creating a Custom Report in Primavera Unifier

Download and Install BI Publisher Desktop for Microsoft Office

Review Unifier Database Table Structure

Connect to Unifier Database

Writing Your First Statement

Adding Line Items

Creating a New Custom Report

Building Report Template

Creating a Report with Line Items

Advanced BI Publisher Functions



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Last Published Wednesday, March 28, 2018