About templates

A template is a MicroStrategy object that serves as a base on which you can build other objects of the same type. You can create a template for almost any kind of MicroStrategy object, such as filters or reports. Templates can save you time when creating multiple similar objects.

For example, you may want to create many filters that contain the current month as part of the definition. Having a filter template that contains current month allows you to skip the step of defining that part of the filter.

Similarly, you may want to create many reports that all contain the Revenue metric and the Region attribute, and are filtered for the current year. Some of these reports may add more data (such as the Profit metric and Revenue Forecast metric), more levels of detail (such as the Call Center and Country attributes), or restrict the data (such as adding filters for specific regions). Having the template allows you to quickly and easily create multiple reports using the same base.

For more details about these templates, including instructions, see About object templates.

More advanced users can create and work with report templates. A report template defines the layout of general categories of information in a report. In a report template, you specify the information that you want to retrieve from your data source, and the way that you want the data to be displayed. A report template does not include filter information.

You combine a report template and a filter to create a report. A report template is already a report and could be run as is, without modifications. (To do this, create a new report, add the template, and then execute the report.) You cannot run a report object template as is; you must move objects from Report objects to the report grid first.

For more details about these templates, including instructions, see Designing a report's structure: Report templates.