January 28, 2011

Multiple Prompt Pages

For your information there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.  - Shrek

shrek-onions-layers

You might say the same thing about m-Fin reports once you’ve tried the Next button.

If the Next button isn’t gray try clicking it instead of the Finish button.  This takes you to a second layer of prompting.

Oh, you both have LAYERS.  - Donkey

cognos_promptnav_buttons

The second prompt page of m-Fin FINANCIAL DETAIL lets you pick just one account code, or a range of them.  None of these are required.  Just type in an account code and go.  Or select a couple Level03 ranges and go.  If you’d like to select a Level04 range, clicking the Reprompt button repopulates the available Level04 values based on your Level03 selection.  These level numbers and their picklist values are from CU’s official account code hierarchy, the account rollup tree.  It’s maintained by my office, the OUC.

acct_range_prompts-300x160

Currently the other reports with second prompt pages are the three reports that contain revenue and expenditure summaries.  You can request expense purpose code and some additional percentage columns.

extras_prompt

Of course, each of these is just two layers of prompting, not nearly as many layers as ogres.