The Pre-Filters Page

You can pre-filter data in the Data Chooser before clicking the OK button to launch the Ad Hoc Editor or before clicking Save as Topic to create a Domain Topic. Pre-filtering data limits the data choices available in a Domain Topic or the fields that ultimately appear in the Ad Hoc view. You also can define a filter on a field that does not appear in the final report. The filter is still applied and only data that satisfies all defined filters appear in the final report. For example, you can filter data to select a single country, in which case it doesn't make sense for the Country field to appear as a row, column, or group. You also can design reports that prompt users to input data to use as a filter.

The Pre-filters page provides powerful functionality for designing views within the server.
To define a filter, complete the following steps:

1. In the  Data Chooser, click  Pre-filters. 

2. Expand the options in the  Fields panel. 

3. Double-click to select a field in the  Fields panel. A corresponding box appears in the  Filters panel. Use the options in this box to establish the filtering parameters for the selected field. 

4. Click each value for comparison in Available Values to move it to Selected Values. The account names appear in Selected Values. 
   
   

   Text fields have both substring comparison operators such as "starts with" or "contains" and whole string matching such as "equals" or "is one of." When you select a whole string matching operator, a list appears showing all existing values for the chosen field retrieved in real-time from the database.

    

5. In the Filters panel, a drop-down containing the account names appears from which you can select multiple values.
    

    If there are more than 50 values to display in Available Values, click the Search button  to search for the value. The maximum number of items that can be displayed in Available Values is configurable.  

   
   

6. To limit the view design to the four account names in  Selected Values, check the  Locked check box:  

   • By default, the  Locked check box is not selected, making the filter available to end-users when they run the report. 

   • In the  Report Viewer, users can click the  Options button to enter a comparison value for this condition; when the user clicks the  Apply or  OK buttons, the report preview refreshes with data that match the condition. The condition is available as a prompt even if the filtered field does not appear in the report. For example, the final report might present data for a single country, but the country is chosen by the user. Once defined, filter prompts can be modified in the  Ad Hoc Editor. 

   • Note that when the  Locked check box is checked, the filter is not available to end-users when they run the report. The condition can only be removed from the view, if needed, but not edited. 

7. Click the  OK button to define the filter. The  Filters panel shows the filters you have defined. 

8. In the  Filters panel, click  Change to modify the condition. Click the  OK button to save the changes. After selecting a row, you can also click  Remove to delete it from the list.