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Reports > Step 3: Defining Prompts (Optional)

Step 3: Defining Prompts (Optional)

To allow Oracle CRM On Demand Answers users to specify a filter value when they run a report, define a run-time prompt for the report. Runtime prompts are useful because reports may need to be filtered differently based upon different users or the dates that reports are run.

A runtime prompt differs from a prebuilt filter in that a filter is set up when the report is defined and cannot be changed without revising the report itself. For example, if you define a prompt on Account Type for the report, your employees are prompted to select which Account Type value to see when they run the report. If you define the prebuilt filter as a specific Account Type, such as Competitor, the filter is hard-coded and cannot be altered by the user at runtime.

You can create prompts on the Define Prompts page in Oracle CRM On Demand Answers. To access the Define Prompts page, either create a new analysis, as described in Getting Started with Answers (Custom Reports), or open an existing analysis in Oracle CRM On Demand Answers.

There are two types of prompts that you can create:

• Column filter prompt

  A column filter prompt provides general filtering of a column within a report. A column filter prompt can present all choices for a column, or, it can present constrained choices for a column. For example, if a report contains a Region=East filter, constraining choices for the City column restricts the selections to cities in the East region only. This eliminates the selection of a mutually exclusive filter that could result in no data.

• Image prompt

  An image prompt provides an image that users click to select criteria for a report. For example, in a sales organization, users can click their territories from an image of a map to see sales information, or click a product image to see sales information about that product. Users who know how to use the HTML <map> tag can create an image map definition.

NOTE: In Oracle CRM On Demand Answers, you do not see the prompts in the Define Criteria, Create Layout, Define Prompts, and Review pages. The prompts are displayed when you preview the analysis, and the prompts are displayed when users run the analysis.

Related Topics

See the following topics for related information:

• Adding Column Filter Prompts
• Adding Image Prompts