Select Information
Sources This document provides you with a brief overview for each activity that can be performed in the designer mode:
Click About to view version information about IFS Business Analytics.
All saved and published reports can be loaded to IFS Business Analytics using this activity.
The report book comprises of the following
features:
Design sheets are Microsoft Excel worksheets with additional IFS defined design controls.
Select Information
Sources Click Select Information Sources to select an information source to use in the report design.
Use Grid to display the display item tree navigator in the Document Actions pane. You can also access design sections through this.
Use Go to Report to view the most recently executed report. Additionally, in the Recent Reports pane once you are in the Report Mode, you can access up to four recent reports and more recent reports that are found when you click on More.
Click Run in order to execute the report and to view results of the latest design changes done to the report. At the point of execution a dialog box would prompt you to enter parameter values if parameters are used in the report. Select the parameter values from the List of Values and then execute the report. After the type of data to be used for the report. This will be displayed depending on the Cache Options specified in the Report Options window.
Cache Data: Select this option to use the already retrieved information in the changed design.
Fresh Data: Select this option to retrieve information from the database and use in the changed design.
Online or Data Mart can be selected as the data access type in the Business Analytics Ribbon. If Online is selected, online information is included in the executed report. If Data Mart is selected, data is extracted from materialized views to the executed report.
This can be used to Refresh Information Sources or to Refresh Business Analytics Settings or to Refresh Global Parameters. If an information source or a global parameter has been changed, you have to use this function to make sure that the latest information is available in Business Analytics.
The Access Type field is used to select Online or Data Mart as the data access type for each information source used to design the report. For example, if GL Balance and GL Period budget are used in a report, you can select Online as the access type for GL Balance and Data Mart for GL Period Budget. As a result, online data will be extracted for GL Balance information source and data from materialized views will be extracted for GL Budget period information source when the report is executed.
Under Settings, the users can change general Business Analytics settings related to Logon and Translation.
This is used to change parameters relating to Execution, Save and Publish, Writeback and Debug.
You can save a design to the database as a template using Save Report in IFS Business Analytics Ribbon. When the report is saved as a template it can be retrieved by another report designer or even by the same designer to work on it at a later time.
Once the design is complete you can make the report public and accessible to an end user by using Publish Report in IFS Business Analytics Ribbon. The report published can be viewed in IFS Business Analytics Report mode or in IFS Applications.
You can validate a BA report which is published, saved or locally saved by using Validate Report in IFS Business Analytics Ribbon. In order to perform this activity, at least one BA report that has been previously saved/published should exist. You can fix all the metadata related errors in the report by using this option.
Use this feature to validate, download and bulk save or republish the downloaded reports.