Scorecard Prompting

A scorecard is used when the selection of an identifier is required to specify what data will be presented in a dashboard. When drilling across from a report to a dashboard or scorecard, the specific identifier is already pre-determined, but selecting a scorecard directly from the Dashboards tab requires that an identifier is chosen. The prompting for this identifier is covered below.

When creating a scorecard, you first need to determine what prompt(s) you want to request from the user.

Single Prompt

In most cases, a single prompt allowing the user to select what specific entity they would like to view data for will suffice. For example, creating a scorecard detailing inventory levels and sales performance for a particular product may simply require a single prompt to select the specific product to view.

When you create a new scorecard, the MITS Discover New Dashboard wizard will ask you to select an identifier as the basis for the scorecard.  It will be a single prompt scorecard.

Multi-Prompt

However, if there are a very large number of products to choose from, it might make sense to have 2 prompts—one that selects a product line and a second that presents a pared down list of products in that product line from which to choose.

Additionally, the security permissions of the users who will be viewing this scorecard may also affect how prompting decisions are made. For example, if a user only has permission to see data for a specific warehouse and the scorecard does not have a prompt available for warehouse selection, that user will not be able to access data in that scorecard. In this case, you would want to create the first level prompt as warehouse, then the product prompt.

Note that when using a multi-level prompt, each prompting field must be filled in before the next one down can be selected, so make sure the prompts are ordered in the same way the user would drill-down through these identifiers in a flash screen report.

Creating a multi-prompt option can be done in the MWML using the manual edit more.

Creating the Multi-Prompt in MWML

The statement defining the prompts is placed at the very beginning of the dashboard source, prior the {TEMPLATE ID="DASHBOARD.OPEN"} statement).

Here is an example:

{DESCRIPTION VALUE="Sales Rep Scorecard"}
   {PROMPT.SEQUENCE APP="SALES" GENERATE.ROOT.PATH="YES"
      {PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Sales Rep" IDENT.ABBREV="R" UI.INPUT.TYPE="DROPDOWN"}
   }
{TEMPLATE ID="DASHBOARD.OPEN"}

The statement begins with: PROMPT.SEQUENCE APP="<hypercube name>"

This begins the prompt statement and identifies the hypercube as “SALES”

Next, the specific prompts are defined with:

PROMPT.ITEM NAME="<what the user sees>" IDENT.ABBREV="<ident from hypercube>" UI.INPUT.TYPE="<textbox or dropdown>"

Example:

PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Sales Rep" IDENT.ABBREV="R" UI.INPUT.TYPE="DROPDOWN"

This defines one prompt, gives it a label of “Sales Rep”, defines “R” as the identifier abbreviation from which to make the selection, and identifies the type of menu (“DROPDOWN”) to provide to the user for selection purposes)

Examples

Below are examples of complete prompt statements. These statements are from the dashboard prompts shown in the screenshots below, so you can see what they look like when rendered.

Single Prompt

Below is an example of a single prompt, requesting that a sales rep be selected by text box input:

{PROMPT.SEQUENCE APP="SALES"

{PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Sales Rep" IDENT.ABBREV="R" UI.INPUT.TYPE="DROPDOWN"}
}

Multiple Prompt

Below is an example of a multi-level prompt, requesting that a region, warehouse, and product line be selected by drop-down menu, drop-down menu, and text box input, respectively:

{PROMPT.SEQUENCE APP="SALES" GENERATE.ROOT.PATH="YES"

{PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Location" IDENT.ABBREV="L1" UI.INPUT.TYPE="DROPDOWN"}

{PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Product Type" IDENT.ABBREV="PT" UI.INPUT.TYPE="DROPDOWN"}

{PROMPT.ITEM NAME="Product" IDENT.ABBREV="P" UI.INPUT.TYPE="TEXTBOX"}}