Strategy ONE

Executing Prompted Reports with Integrity Manager

In a prompted report, the user specifies certain objects, such as the elements of an attribute, or the range of values for a metric. For an introduction to prompts, see the Basic Reporting Help.

Integrity Manager can use any of the following methods to resolve prompts:

  • Personal answer: Personal answers are default prompt answers that are saved for individual MicroStrategy logins. Any prompts with personal answers saved for the login using Integrity Manager can be resolved using those personal answers.
  • Default object answer: A prompted report can have two possible default answers: a default answer saved with the prompt, and a default answer saved with the report. These default answers can be used to resolve the prompt. If both default answers exist, Integrity Manager uses the answer saved with the report.
  • Integrity Manager user-defined answer: Any required value and hierarchy prompts can be answered according to the defaults provided in the Select Prompt Settings page. You can provide default answers for value prompts, and a default number of elements for hierarchy prompts.
  • Integrity Manager internal answer: Integrity Manager can use its internal logic to attempt to answer any other required prompts without default answers. For example, a prompt that requires a certain number of elements to be selected from a list can be answered by selecting the minimum number of elements from the beginning of the list.

By default Integrity Manager uses all of these options, in the order listed above. You can disable some options or change the order of the options in the Advanced Options dialog box in the Integrity Manager Wizard.

For example, you may want to never use your personal answers to answer prompts, and use the user-defined answers instead of the default answers for value prompts. You can configure the user-defined answers for value prompts in the Select Prompt Settings page. Then, in the Advanced Options dialog box, clear the Personal answer check box and move Integrity Manager user-defined answer above Default object answer.

Optional Prompts

You control whether Integrity Manager answers optional prompts on the Select Prompt Settings page of the Integrity Manager Wizard.

  • To answer optional prompts in the same way as required prompts, select the Answer optional prompts check box.
  • To leave optional prompts that do not have default or personal answers unanswered, clear the Answer optional prompts check box.

Using Non-Default Personal Answers in Prompts

By default, when Integrity Manager answers a prompt with a personal answer, it uses only the default personal answer for each prompt. If a prompt does not have a default personal answer for the current user, Integrity Manager moves to the next method of prompt resolution.

To change this default, in the Advanced Options dialog box, select the Group personal prompt answers by their names option. When this option is selected, Integrity Manager executes each report/document once for each personal answer for each prompt in the report/document. If multiple prompts in the report/document have personal answers with the same name, those personal answers are used for each prompt in a single execution of the report/document.

For personal prompt answers to be grouped, the answers must have the exact same name. For example, if the base project contains a personal prompt answer named AnswerA and the target project contains a personal prompt answer named Answer_A, those prompt answers will not be grouped together.

For example, consider a report with two prompts, Prompt1 and Prompt2. The user executing the report has personal answers for each of these prompts. The personal answers are named as follows:

Prompt

Answers

Prompt1

AnswerA, AnswerB

Prompt2

AnswerA, AnswerC, AnswerD

Integrity Manager executes this report four times, as shown in the table below:

Execution

Prompt 1 answer

Prompt 2 answer

1

Personal answer AnswerA

Personal answer AnswerA

2

Personal answer AnswerB

(next prompt answer method)

3

(next prompt answer method)

Personal answer AnswerC

4

(next prompt answer method)

Personal answer AnswerD

Since Prompt1 and Prompt2 both have a personal answer saved with the name AnswerA, Integrity Manager groups those answers together in a single execution. Only Prompt1 has an answer named AnswerB, so Integrity Manager executes the report with AnswerB for Prompt1 and uses the next available method for answering prompts to answer Prompt2. In the same way, only Prompt2 has answers named AnswerC and AnswerD, so when Integrity Manager executes the report using those answers for Prompt2 it uses the next available prompt answer method for Prompt1.

Unanswered Prompts

If a prompt cannot be answered by Integrity Manager, the report execution fails and the report's status changes to Not Supported. A detailed description of the prompt that could not be answered can be found in the Details tab of the Report Data area for that failed report. To view this description, select the report in the Results summary area and then click the Details tab.

You can configure Integrity Manager to open a Not Supported report in MicroStrategy Web. You can answer any prompts manually and save the report. Integrity Manager then executes the newly saved report, using the specified prompt answers.

Prompts that cannot be answered by Integrity Manager's internal logic include:

  • Prompts that cannot be answered at all, such as an element list prompt that contains no elements in the list
  • Level prompts that use the results of a search object to generate a list of possible levels
  • Prompted metric qualifications (used in filters or custom groups)
  • MDX expression prompts

To Resolve Unanswered Prompts in MicroStrategy Web

Configure the Integrity Test to Open the Reports in MicroStrategy Web

  1. Create an integrity test. Step through the Integrity Manager Wizard and enter the information required on each page.
  2. In the Select Prompt Settings page, click Advanced Options.
  3. Select the Link to MicroStrategy Web for unresolved prompts check box.
  4. In the URL for Base connection and URL for Target Connection fields, type the URL for the baseline and target projects' Web servers. To test each URL, click the Test button. If it is correct, a browser window opens at the main MicroStrategy Web page for that server.

    The default URL for MicroStrategy Web is:
    http://webservername/MicroStrategy/
    asp/Main.aspx

    where webservername is the name of your MicroStrategy Web server machine.

  5. Click OK.
  6. Finish defining the test, then execute it.

Resolve the Prompts in MicroStrategy Web

  1. If any reports contain prompts that cannot be resolved by Integrity Manager, the Link to MicroStrategy Web for Unresolved Prompts dialog box opens.
  2. To save the report with the correct prompt answers, click the report's name in the dialog box.

    If a Login dialog box opens, select an authentication method, enter a username and password, and click OK

  3. Answer the prompts for the report and save it. Depending on your choices in the Advanced Options dialog box, you may need to save the report as a static, unprompted report.
  4. In Integrity Manager, click Continue.

    To continue the integrity test without re-running the report, click Ignore. The report is listed in the Results Summary area with a status of Not Supported. To skip all future requests to resolve prompts in MicroStrategy Web for this integrity test, click Ignore All.