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Reports > Getting Started with Answers (Custom Reports)

Getting Started with Answers (Custom Reports)

NOTE: To create custom reports your user role must include the Manage Custom Reports privilege or the Manage Personal Reports privilege.

The Getting Started with Answers page has links for the following actions:

• Open Existing Analysis. Click this link to open an existing analysis that is stored in your private folder or in the shared folder. For more information, see Managing Analyses.
• Manage Analyses. Click this link to delete or rename an existing analysis. For more information, see Managing Analyses.
• Create New Analysis. This section contains links to subject areas that form the basis of a custom report.

Creating a New Analysis (Custom Report)

The Create New Analysis section has two listings of subject areas that you can use in your report: the Analytics subject areas and the Reporting subject areas. Most reports use data from a single subject area. It is possible to create a report using data from two subject areas, but it is an advanced task.

Each subject area contains data fields (organized into dimensions) and their related metrics.

The Analytics subject areas use data that is compiled nightly. These subject areas generally have historical or trend data, or contain more complex calculations than those found in the Reports subject areas. If this is the first time you have signed in, the historical analyses do not show data until the first ETL run has completed.

The Reporting subject areas provide real-time analyses. The data in these reports can change during the working day. Reports made from Reporting subject areas have a Refresh button, so you can update them in real time. For more information about subject areas, see About Subject Areas in Reports.

Before you begin. Do the following:

• Make sure the data that you want to include is not already available in a prebuilt report.
• Be familiar with the limitations of reports and reporting record types. For more information, see About Limitations in Reports.
• Review the information about custom reports. If you have added new fields, you can use those custom fields on a report. If you have changed the display names for fields, the new display names are used for the reports. However, if you rename record types, such as Accounts, the new names are not reflected in the reports.

  NOTE: If you selected the option to add new picklist values when importing data, those new picklist values might not be displayed in the reports until the next ETL run completes.Therefore, you might not be able to use the new picklist values as filters during that time period.

  NOTE: Custom related information fields are not exposed in Analytics Answers.You should instead use the original fields that are referred to by the custom related information fields for reporting.

To create a custom report, click one of the Analytics or Reporting subject areas. Oracle CRM On Demand Answers then guides you through the process of setting up your custom report and performing a dynamic analysis. This process consists of these general steps:

1. Step 1: Defining Criteria

   Set up columns and filters. Add filters to determine which data to include (optional but recommended). Filters restrict the data that is displayed, reducing the size of the data set and avoiding performance issues.

2. Step 2: Creating Layouts

   Add charts or tables (optional) to include graphical or alternative representations of the data.

3. Step 3: Defining Prompts (Optional)

   Add prompts that allow users to specify filter values when they run the report.

4. Step 4: Reviewing Reports

   View the report results before you save it.

To begin creating a custom report

1. Click the Reports tab at the top of your page.
2. On the Reports Homepage, in the Custom Reports and Analyses section, click the Design Analyses Link.

   Oracle CRM On Demand Answers appears in a separate page, independent of the other Oracle CRM On Demand pages.

3. Click an Analytics subject area or a Reporting subject area.

Analytics URL Reference Is Not Supported

Oracle CRM On Demand does not support using a direct Analytics URL reference either from within the Oracle CRM On Demand application or from an external embedded URL. Do not use this URL reference to embed analytics content in custom Web tabs, Web applets, or Web links because these customizations might not work after an upgrade. Until the direct Analytics URL reference is fully supported, use the custom Homepage report feature to display analytics content within the Oracle CRM On Demand application. You cannot request support for problems encountered using a direct analytics URL. Only problems that occur within the Oracle CRM On Demand application are supported.

Language Support for Picklists

Oracle CRM On Demand Answers supports the display of picklist values in your user language in addition to the company’s default language. The following table lists the record types that support these picklists and the name of the picklist subfolders. Each subfolder contains a set of picklist fields that you can use to display the picklist values in your user language.

The User record type does not always appear as the User dimension. Other dimension names used for the User record type are Approver, Final Approver, and Last Approved By. If a user record type is contained within another record type, then the user record type appears in the second level of the hierarchy as you would expect. However, the user-language picklist and the company picklist also appear in the second level of the hierarchy, not under the user record type.

To display the picklist values in the company language, you can continue to use the picklist fields that are under the standard dimension folders. Also the picklist fields, suffixed with the term Code, that were previously available under the main folder are now available under the subfolders (such as Account Picklist Fields (Code), Activity Picklist Fields (Code), and so on) with the suffix removed from the field names. You can continue to use these language independent code (LIC) fields and the optimized version of the base picklist fields in report filters to improve query performance.

In reports, picklist values appear in the user or company selected language. However, picklist fields that do not have a value selected in the user interface are displayed as shown in the following table. The behavior of the picklist value display depends on the type of picklist, which can be prebuilt or indexed custom.

The following table describes the behavior of the picklist value display for historical subject areas.

The following table describes the behavior of the picklist value display for real-time subject areas.