Report Formatting

• If you're having a problem displaying or printing pages after the first page of a report, and you have an image of some sort as part of your report layout, check to see whether the image is part of a table with other elements. If it is, move it outside the table and see if this fixes your problem.
• To minimize the processing time for your query, consider using the Desktop Intelligence toolbar icons or the Slice and Dice panel (rather than the query itself) to perform the following operations on the desktop once your query has finished:

Sort the data: You can place sorts on multiple objects using the Slice and Dice panel. You may also add breaks or report sections based on objects, and then sort those as well. Filter the data: Once you have retrieved all the data meeting your conditions you may wish to further filter the data. Filtering via the Slice and Dice Panel enables you to include or exclude specific values retrieved. This is particularly useful when working with a large data set that you wish to manipulate many ways before deciding upon the final report format. You may set, change and remove filters as often as you wish without having to rerun the original query. Perform calculations: You may add calculations to result objects, such as Sum, Count, Average, Minimum, Maximum and Percentage. This allows you to both view the data at the level of detail retrieved by your query and calculate at break levels you have designated. Available calculations are dependent upon the datatype of the object. More advanced calculations are also available using report Variables.

• Duplicate rows - to show or not to show

  Unless you intentionally go to the Options in the Query Panel and select “no duplicate rows”, Business Objects will return duplicate rows if they exist in the database.
  However, Desktop Intelligence will by default show the aggregate of those rows in the report. In other words, the report may not be showing you all the underlying data. You can see all the rows if you go to the “View Data” tool, but if everything on two rows is identical in every column, then Deski will only display one row in the resulting table on the report.
  If this isn’t what you want it to do, to force Deski to show all rows, do the following:
  

  • Right click on the table in your report, and select Format Table.
  • On the General tab, check the box that says “Avoid Duplicate Rows Aggregation” and then click OK.