Using dynamic drill down reports to provide a series of detailed web reports

Drill-down reports are summary reports that users can drill through to get related detail data in other reports at a granular level. The first report presented in a series of drill down reports provides only required or necessary data. Then, the user decides whether they want further details. By adding hyperlinks, you make drill-down reports interactive for your user. For example, a report first might show only a pie chart that summarizes the report results. When a user clicks a slice of the pie chart, a detailed report opens for that particular slice of data.

The following scenarios look at the report development of the “All incidents by Status and assigned Group” drill-down report in .

To create a drill down report

1. Gather and analyze data to decide how to divide information into multiple stages.
   For example, the example report has a high number of incidents based on their status. The incidents have a particular status and are assigned to groups. There are also records for the incidents. A particular record in an incident form can provide details of that incident. Therefore, the design of this drill down report needs the following levels:
   
   In this example:
   • A pie chart shows Incident Count categories based on Status.
   • A bar chart shows the Incident Count by Assigned Group for the Status slice selected in the pie chart.
   • A detailed incident report based on the Assigned Group bar selected in the bar chart is available.
2. Create a data source and data set required for a report (for example, HPD: Help Desk).
3. Insert a table in the report layout area.
4. Bind the data set property of the table.
5. Insert the required fields in the details section (for example, Incident Number, Assignee, Customer Name, and so on).
6. Insert groups in the table by right-clicking on the detail row of the table and selecting Insert Group.
   Insert the first group based on Status, and the second group based on Assigned Group.
7. Insert a chart in the table by right-clicking in a table header and selecting Insert > Chart.
   Insert a pie chart showing the number of Incidents categorized based on Incident Status.
   
8. In the Status group header (header of first group) of the table, insert a bar chart that will show the number of Incidents categorized based on Assigned Group.
9. In the second group header, select Insert > Grid to display details of Incident Count, Assigned Group, and Status.
   The following figure shows a drill down report inserting a grid.
   
10. In the first group header, right-click and select Properties, select Bookmark in the Property Editor, and enter the following in the Bookmark field:
    row["Status"]
11. To set the bookmark with a hyperlink to the pie chart:
    1. Right-click the pie chart created in step 7.
    2. Open the Format Chart tab.
    3. From the nodes in the left panel, select Series > Value Series.
    4. Click Interactivity.
    5. In the Series Interactivity dialog box, click Add.
12. In the Hyperlink Editor dialog box, enter the hyperlink name in the Name field, and click Edit base URL.
13. In the Hyperlink Options dialog box, select Internal Bookmark, and select the bookmark you created.
    This adds the functionality for clicking a particular slice of a pie chart, and then navigating to a bar chart that shows the incident count of a selected Status based on the Assigned Group.
14. Create a hyperlink for a bar chart by repeating the process from steps 10 through 13.

To create a drill down report that links to an incident record

This example shows how to provide a list of incident records in a report so that users can click a particular incident number to open the form (for example, HPD:Help Desk) that includes the incident details. Then, users can easily access and modify an incident record from a report.

1. To add a new report parameter, select Hidden in the New Parameter dialog box box, and click OK.
   This new parameter will be used in the script to fetch the mid tier URL.
2. Select a data set.
   In this example, select the HPD:Help Desk data set.

3. Go to the Script tab of the report, and select the BeforeOpen event from the Script list.

   The script fetches the MidTier URL at runtime and sets it to the hidden parameter created in step 1. The script is as follows:

   var request = reportContext.getHttpServletRequest(); 
   var urlValue = null;   
   if (request != null) {
        var session = request.getSession(); 
        if (session != null) {
              urlValue = session.getAttribute("midTierURL"); 
         }
   }
   if (urlValue != null) {
        params["midTierURL"].value = urlValue; 
   } else {
        params["midTierURL"].value = null;
   }
4. Go to Layout tab of the report, and select Incident Number, which was inserted in the table details section in step 5.
5. Select the Hyperlink properties tab, and click Edit.

6. In the Hyperlink Options dialog box, select URL as the hyperlink type, and enter the following value:

   params["midTierURL"].value + row["Entry ID"]
   choose Target = "Blank"
7. Save the report.
8. Preview the results by running the report on the mid tier and clicking an incident number.
   The selected incident opens in the Help Desk form.