Report Options

Overview

The report options menu allows you to change the layout of your report (cross tab with charts) and determine the way your report will behave - such as will it contain drill down or can it be scheduled.

Table and Chart Display Options

The main feature of the report output design options is the ability to specify how your report will be presented. The possible options are included below:

Simply click on a radio button corresponding to the display type you wish to use. The default for Yellowfin is the table display option.

If you choose one of the chart options the report builder wizard will have an additional step included. This step is the chart builder page it is there that you will be able to select the specific style and detail of your chart.

See [Chart Builder] for more information.

Table Types

Data displayed in your reports are displayed in tables. With Yellowfin you have the option to select what type of table you wish to use for data output. When creating a new report the default table type is set to COLUMN.

To select a table type click on one of the table radio buttons presented in the report options section. For example if you want to create a crosstab table, click on the crosstab table radio button.

See [Table Layout Options] for more information.

Analysis

Your Analysis options provide you with the ability to select co-display to display multiple reports on the same output page, create drill through / down reports or add sub-queries.

For example you may want to display data from two separate views on the same page or drill from one report into more detailed data from a different view.

See [Analysis & Related Reports] for more information.

Report Type

You can select to create a regular report or a KPI report. A KPI report is one that is run on a scheduled basis and has a specified target. Yellowfin will determine how the current value in the report compares to the target value and will determine the trend of the data.

Only KPI style reports can be added to a KPI dashboard style tab.

See [KPI Reports] for more information.

Report Properties

Use the report properties section to save the name and description of your report. Note: these can be updated when you save your report as well.

Giving your report a name from the Report Data page is useful if you choose to leave your report in DRAFT. Since your report will already have a name by which you can search.

Report Data

The report data section provides you with the ability to:

1. Show duplicate records rather than distinct values
2. Limit the amount of data returned in your report. This option is especially useful if your report contains a lot of data but you wish to pre-view it multiple times as you are designing it.
3. Show NULL values as zero - this is only displayed as a cross tab option. If the cross tab contains NULL values they will be displayed as a 0. Un-tick this if you want to show nulls or blank cells.
4. Set a default access filter - so that for each person that runs a report they will only see data relevant to them.
   

Note: when your administrator sets up a data source they may specify a default limit for that source. For example they may specify that the maximum number of rows that can be returned by a query is 1000 rows. You will not be able to override this default limit.

Select Distinct Versus Duplicate Values

Yellowfin automatically applies aggregations to a query. It makes the assumption that when a user is building a report that distinct values are being requested from the database. For example if you have 3 records with a customer name Fred Smith a report containing first and last name will only return 1 record for Fred Smith.

However, it is possible to turn the 'distinct' process off so that you will return 3 records containing fed smith.

From the Report options menu select Report Data and tick the 'Show Duplicate records' check box.