Can report instances be relocated? - need strategic advice

[EDJO]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of setting up CRS XI at my organization. Here's a representation of what I'm trying to accomplish.

- We have 3 sales regions: Region A, Region B, and Region C.
- There are 4 users: a sales manager from each region and a VP of sales, who oversees all regions
- There is a Sales Report
- When the Region A manager looks at the Sales Report, it should show only data filtered for Region A. (The same holds true for the other managers/regions.)
- When the VP looks at the Sales Report, it should show data from all regions.

Here's my proposed set-up:
1. Create 4 folders in CRS XI: All Regions, Region A, Region B, and Region C.
2. Upload the .rpt file into ALL folders.
3. Schedule the report to run with different filter parameters in each folder and restrict the 4 users to only access their respective folders. This is essentially folder level security.

The downside is that if the .rpt changes, it needs to be uploaded into 4 different places.

Is there a way to upload the .rpt to a single place, and to move the 4 instances into their respective folders at run-time?

Any thoughts or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
If the users need to log into CE ( sorry, BOE XI) to run the report, then the CE Username is available to be used in the Record Selection Criteria..
Test for which user, and set the filter accordingly..That way you only need 1 report.





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[EDJO]

Turkbear,

That's for the info. I still have some confustion.

These reports will be run on a fixed schedule and not run by the users. Therefore, the instances will be created before the user even logs in. Therefore, I don't think the filtering technique can be applied (or can it?) because a report instance is basically a snapshot of fixed data. Therefore, it can't be filtered. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[JD5241]

Try object packages... when you put a report into an object package, you can set the specific parameters in each package to return the data you're looking for. And if the report needs to be updated, you just do it to the original report you based the packages off, and any changes should trickle up... only need to update in one place.

I'm just learning about object packages, so if my info is off in any way, someone please let me know!

"I have no idea what's going on." -Towelie

 

[Lucifurr]

You could use APOS VTS (View Time Security). This product can be added to Enterprise, but it will cost you money. What it does is let you view certain results in a single report instance depending on who you are logging on as.

 

[paulmarr]

You could also create a business view over the database tables you are using - and create a new table that holds information about the users - ie. sales region, etc - and then do a left outer join from that table to the others - also achieving View Time Security - and your report instances will also be filtered the same way - at no additional expense to you!

cheers
paulmarr