What is a Reporting Prompt?

Reporting prompts are run-time criteria that the user provides. Example prompts might be the period and year of the report or analysis dimensions.

A prompt value can be:

  • Text
  • Number
  • Date
  • Picklist
  • Accounting Period
  • Company (current company)

A prompt value cannot be a lookup. You can define a range by using two prompts.

When you start using FinancialForce Reporting, you need to change the default values for the reports that you have generated in your org. Contact FinancialForce Customer Support for information on how we can help you.

Note:

Prompt values are not retained between runs of the report.

If the prompt is text that includes an apostrophe, insert the backslash (\) escape character immediately before the apostrophe.

Reporting prompts of type "Date" accept values in the format 2014-08-31.

Company

You can set the report definition to operate within the current company set in Accounting only. To do so, add a reporting prompt of type "Company" to your reporting definition. When you create a reporting prompt of this type, enter a name and a type of "Company" and leave all other prompt fields blank. Now, all reports will operate within the current company set in Accounting. If you want to change company, use the Select Company page in Accounting.

Sort Order

You can control the order in which prompts are displayed to the user and, in some cases, on the final report. See Sorting Reporting Prompts for more information.

Notes:
  • You can leave gaps in the sequence. They are ignored.
  • If no sort order is defined for the reporting prompts, the prompts are presented to the user in the order in which they were created.
  • If one or more reporting prompts have no defined sort order, they are added to the end of the defined sequence.
  • If you add a reporting prompt after the sort order is defined, it is added to the end of the defined sequence.