I’m looking for a way to use a set of RadioButtons to pass as a search parameter to the BAQ. Here’s the ideal:
We have a dashboard that shows sales data. It currently has a ton of criteria in the TrackerView that we can filter down with, including a “ShipTo State” search term. I want to be able to select multiple states via radiobuttons, and have those inserted to the SQL query as “OR” clauses, ie. when you select “AL” and “GA” radio buttons, the query reflects "WHERE ShipTo.State = ‘AL’ OR ShipTo.State = ‘GA’.
I rewrote the BAQ to accept parameters, but when added to a dashboard, the popup window appears every time that you refresh the dashboard, and you are still limited to only 1 selection for the parameter. I don’t see a way to set the parameter as a “multi-selection” type of tool, and I don’t want the popup to show when the dashboard is refreshed.
Why not take the parameter out of the BAQ and then add a tracker view to the dashboard with the radio buttons and filter the Dashboard results based on the selection. Set the Dashboard to NOT auto populate on load. Then your user can select the radio button, hit refresh and done.
When you add more than one radio button to the TrackerView, and set them to the same QueryColumn, you can only select one at a time. I want to be able to search multiple states at the same time. Unfortunately, when our system was set up, no consideration was made in the idea that we might expand our outside sales staff, and the powers that be decided to not setup Sales Regions. So every sales person (we currently have 11) has the ability to enter Orders for any customer. Of those 11 sales people, 4 of them are outside sales staff that are responsible for sales/marketing in 3-5 states within their local region (similar to a Regional Sales Rep). So, even though they aren’t necessarily the “SalesPerson” on the orders, we want to see and analyze their “region’s” total sales. Now, I can fairly easily export the dashboard’s dataset to Excel and then create a PivotTable and PivotCharts to show this, but I’m looking for a more streamlined process so we can get a dashboard out to the sales staff so they can generate those reports themselves. Teaching 11 people with varying levels of Excel expertise to do this consistently as individuals has not been successful to this point, so the more automated I can make the process, the better our outcome and acceptance of the solution will be.
So, not being fully aware of your particular environment I would say that if you set up Sales Territories and associate the states to the appropriate territory, then assign the rep to the territory, you could easily filter then by just adding Territory to the query and use it as an input prompt on you Dashboard. IF however, that isn’t an option, then we need to consider other option (which I will have to contemplate)
Instead of using a radio button, try just using a text field and then entering the comma separated values, with no spaces. I know this works for a BAQ Report, not sure if it would work for a dashboard or not. Just a thought.
Second option, add a crystal report to the dashboard and then just put a multi-select parameter in crystal. have the dashboard auto load, then when the user clicks generate report, it will prompt for parameters and you can select all the states you want.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this over the weekend, and had no luck with the comma separated values. I haven’t worked with BAQ Reports, so I guess I will be spending some time looking into that next.
Yea I gave it a shot as well, and it didn’t work, I figured it would be a wild shot. I’m not talking about a BAQ report (which would work) I was suggesting adding a report to your dashboard. Open the dashbaord maintenance -> Tools ->Report tools -> Create sample data. Open crystal set that as a your data location, add a parameter for states so that you can select many. Save. Then add a new “report view” tab to your dashboard and make it the first tab. When the user loads the dashboard, they click on the “generate report” it prompts like a crystal report asking for parameters and they can select as many states as they want.
