Using Prompts

Prompts support a new text property named Hint. This hint is displayed when the user must answer these prompts in the Prompts dialog box. It can be used by document designers to help their users answer these prompts.

In Design mode, you can define this hint in the Prompt Hint text field available when creating or editing:

• A filter prompt in the Edit Prompt dialog box.
• A member prompt in the Member Selector dialog box, Prompt tab.
• A ranking prompt, in the Prompt Properties dialog box when defining a ranking in the Query Panel.

The buttons in this text field toolbar allow you to bold, italicize or underline the selected text or add a hyperlink.

In Design mode, the Main Side Panel contains a new tab named Prompts listing all the prompts of the document. If you select a prompt, the Build Side Panel → Properties tab displays the properties of this prompt, including its hint and the queries it is coming from (this may be useful if the prompt has been factorized).

If your document contains prompts coming from several queries, you can define in which order they are displayed in the Prompts dialog box. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons and click Apply to change the default order of the prompts. Click the Reset All button to restore the default order.

If variants have been defined for your prompts, you can click the Shared Variants button to open a dialog box where you can decide the ones to be public or to remain personal.

This Prompts tab is also available in Reading mode but it displays only the prompts answers and you cannot change prompts properties.

Variants are lists of predefined answers to prompts. Since their release in SAP BI 4.1, they are only available to the users who have created them. Now, you can also share your variants so they can be used by any users.

When you save your answers as a variant, select its type in the drop-down list of the Create Variant dialog box:

• Personal: to be the only one to use it, as in previous releases.
• Public: to share it so that it can be used by any users.

You can group optional prompts to define how they are displayed and how they are answered.

In Design mode, in the Main Side Panel → Prompts tab, click the Add Group button in the toolbar to open the Create Group dialog box:

• By default, a group is mandatory and at least one of the prompts it contains must be answered. Select the Optional checkbox to turn this group into an optional one.
• By default, a group is not exclusive and any prompt of the group can be answered. Select the Exclusive checkbox so that only one of the prompts in the group can be answered. Answering one prompt of the group resets the answered values of its other prompts.
• Add prompts to this group by clicking the optional prompts listed in the Available Prompts panel. The selected prompts are moved to the Selected Prompts panel.

If all optional prompts of a group are deleted or turned to mandatory, the group no longer appears in the Prompts dialog box when the document is refreshed. But in Design mode, a warning icon is displayed beside this group in the Main Side Panel → Prompts tab to highlight that this group is no longer used. You can delete it or add new optional prompts to it.

When the document is refreshed, in the Prompts dialog box, the prompts are displayed under the groups to which they have been added. You can expand or collapse a group to show or hide its prompts. If a group is mandatory, you need to answer at least one prompt from this group. If a group is exclusive, you can answer only one prompt from this group.