Nested Drop Down

[viRtuAlinsaniTy]

Anyone know anything about Nested Drop Downs?

I need to use prompts where the first box would say:

State:
FLORIDA
TEXAS
etc

And if you chose TEXAS, the values in the 2nd drop down would only show you the values that relate to Texas i.e.
AUSTIN CITY
HOUSTON
ILLINOIS
etc

i.e. the solution i am looking is where a 2nd drop down prompt has a dependency on the value selected in the first drop-down prompt.
As I see it, the default solution fetches all of the values for the prompt drop-down boxes as it creates the prompt window, and I can't see a way of refreshing a specific field at a specific moment in the prompt selection process inside the window.

Thanks for looking!

 

[griffindm]

In Impromptu the concept is called cascading prompts. Usually using report picklists to guide the user through choices that interact, giving the final report an efficient filter to run against the data.

The trick to using them effectively is that there is no direct linkage from the initial report picklist to the final report. This means that if you were to present a list of states, and the user selected Kansas, they could select "Kansas City" from the second cascading picklist. If you did not qualify the filters properly, the final report might show both of the "Kansas City" values, one in Kansas and one in Missouri.

The key to doing this right is to make sure that the second report keeps the initial modifier in the parameter passed to the final report. This does not have to be shown to the user, but must still be used to filter the final report's data. In this example, the second report might have two columns, one a concatenation of both state and city, and one just with the city name. The second is displayed, but the concatenation is what is used as the filter for the final report.

Following these guidelines you can create very efficient reports for Impromptu. Check out the Impromptu Prompts FAQ here for more tips.

Regards,

Dave Griffin


The Decision Support Group
Reporting Consulting with Cognos BI Tools
"Magic with Data"
Want good answers? Read FAQ401-2487 first!

http://www.decisionsupportgroup.com