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About prompted reports

A prompt is a question presented to the user who runs the report. Any report can contain prompts. Depending on the answers the user provides, the report brings back and displays different data from your data source.

Answering a prompted report differently each time it is executed is one way to ensure that a report is executed against your data source and displays the most recent data, rather than pulling results from the cached data. This is because different prompt answers usually require different data than what is stored in the report’s cache.

How you answer a prompt differs depending on the type of prompt you are presented with. Prompts can be divided into the following groups, based on what is required to answer them:

Prompts that request you to select items from a list, to define the data you want to see on the report. For those with a wider knowledge of prompt design, these types of prompts include attribute element list prompts and object prompts.

Prompts that request you to type in specific values or text to search for, such as a specific date, a number, or a word. For those with a wider knowledge of prompt design, these types of prompts are called value prompts, and include date prompts, numeric prompts, text prompts, long prompts, and Big Decimal prompts.
Prompts that request you to form a more complex statement of the datayou want to see displayed on the report. When you define a statement, you are creating a filter for the report. This group of prompts can be divided into two subsets:
- Prompts for which you create a filter based on an attribute, or business concept. For those with a wider knowledge of prompt design, these types of prompts include hierarchy qualification prompts and attribute qualification prompts.
- Prompts for which you create a filter based on a metric, or calculation of business data. For those with a wider knowledge of prompt design, these types of prompts are metric qualification prompts.
Related tasks
Running a report