Customized prompts instructions for every report.

Posted by sw on April 20, 2009 under Corvu |

I have been asked about this topic a number of times on several sites but never had the chance to really dwell into it further until now. In a new environment where people are getting used to of having reports running in HyperVu rather than usual excel, it’s a good idea to provide users as much help and instructions in any shape you can. Well how do you that every time somebody runs a report? And no we are not talking about popup’s because I find them very annoying myself.

Normally when somebody opens a report in HyperVu which has a prompt embedded, they would either see a blank page with prompts or one frame of prompts and other frame with a report view depending on your URL settings. Now we will replace the report view next to the prompt frame with a portfolio page which has images of your prompts and some instructional text along with it.

 

Now simply open an existing report in HyperVu which has some prompts embedded, I am going to use one which has a pick list and a date prompt. Once it’s open, press F11 on your keyboard so you can capture this screen. Now choose Alt+Print screen on your keyboard and then paste your image into an image processing application (e.g. Paint), crop date prompt out, save it as a JPEG and then do the same steps for the picklist prompt. (Make sure you save these images in the CorBusiness shared folder or HyperVu userfiles (depending on your settings) because they will be published in HyperVu later)

 

Next open CorPortfolio, embed these pictures on to the page and use text boxes to provide as much instructions as you want. Once you satisfied with the text, save it under shared folder and close CorVu desktop client.

 

Now open HyperVu, navigate to the earlier created portfolio page and copy only the path under the shared drive.

 

Similar URL that you will see:

http://corvu/corvucgi/cvhtmsrv.exe?file=/Portal/Admin/cbr/PromptInstructions.cbr

Part of the URL that you need to copy:

/Portal/Admin/cbr/PromptInstructions.cbr

 

Now navigate and open the report that you earlier took the prompts off from….
Change the prompts parameters to either (&promptframe=3) or (&promptframe=4)…
Add the following parameter (&blank=) at the end of the URL..
Now paste the copied path after it and hit enter.

 

Your URL should look similar to mines:

http://corvu/corvucgi/cvhtmsrv.exe?file=/Portal/qrp/MeasureSearch/PerformanceReport.qrp&promptframe=3&blank=/Portal/Admin/cbr/PromptInstructions.cbr

 

As you can see on one side you have your prompts and other side the instructions. This gives you the choice of either having one comprehensive instruction for all your reports or have different ones for each report not mention a chance to describe your reports purpose (have a look below).

 

 

 

Hope you found this article useful.

 

Shariq Wagener