What is a Prompt?

By using a prompt in a filter or template, you can:

• Apply filtering conditions to the report, a custom group on the report, or a metric on the report.
• Choose what objects, such as attributes and metrics, are included in the report.

Prompts allow you to determine how the report returns data from the data warehouse. Prompts save you time. Instead of building several different reports that each answer a different, single question, a set of questions can be asked just before a prompted report is executed. There are many types of prompts, and each type allows a different type of question to be asked. These prompt types are discussed individually later in this section.

One type of question that can be asked is about the subset of data that should be included on the report. For example, to see a report about sales in a particular geographical region, you can build three reports— Sales in West Region, Sales in Central Region, and Sales in East Region. However, using a more efficient approach, you can create one report called "Sales, prompted on Region" that asks the user for the region to include.

A different type of question to ask is what attribute should be shown on the report. For example, Sales by Day, Week, Month, Quarter, or Year can be consolidated via prompting. This report asks the user by which time unit the report data should be displayed.

For a list of the type of prompts, see Types of Prompts.