Strategy ONE

Custom Group Interaction with the Report Filter

The Custom Group Interaction With the Report Filter VLDB property allows you define how a report filter interacts with a custom group.

When a custom group that is created using attribute qualifications is included on a report with a report filter, the report filter is applied to the individual custom group elements. However, if you create a custom group using metric qualifications or banding qualifications, report filters are not applied by default to the custom group elements.

This can cause unexpected results to be returned in some scenarios. For example, a custom group displays revenue totals for customers in columns that represent the range of revenue that the customer is in. A customer that has contributed $7,500 in revenue displays this revenue total in the column for customers that contributed $5,000 to $10,000 in revenue. This custom group is included on a report that has a report filter that restricts results to data for the year 2007 only.

In this scenario, the report filter is evaluated after the custom group. If the same customer that has a total of $7,500 only had $2,500 in 2007, then the report would only display $2,500 for that customer. However, the customer would still be in the $5,000 to $10,000 in revenue range because the custom group did not account for the report filter.

You can define report filter and custom group interaction to avoid this scenario. This VLDB property has the following options:

  • No interaction - static custom group (default): Report filter qualifications are not applied to custom groups that use metric qualifications or banding qualifications. Filtering is only applied after the custom group has been evaluated.
  • Apply report filter to custom group: Report filter qualifications are applied to custom groups and are used to determine the values for each custom group element.
  • Apply report filter to custom group, but ignore related elements from the report filter: Report filter qualifications that do not qualify on attribute elements that are used to define the custom group elements are applied to custom groups. These filter qualifications are used to determine the values for each custom group element. For example, a report filter that qualifies on the Customer attribute is not applied to a custom group that also uses the Customer attribute to define its custom group elements.

For information on custom groups and defining these options for a custom group, see the Advanced Reporting Help.

Levels at Which You Can Set This

Database instance