Tag: Search

Excel page with dynamic search

Member Searching To Create A Product Details Page

Catherine France/ / Dashboard Design, Reporting & Analytics

XLCubed is a great tool when it comes to member searching: it allows you to quickly and easily find members as well as dynamically update a report based on search parameters. Take a read of our last post to get started with this functionality.

The example in this post uses these searching methods to create a product search page. The left side provides search functionality for all the products contained in the cube, with a link to select the product which displays the full details on the right side.

Continue reading “Member Searching To Create A Product Details Page”

Finding a needle in a haystack – Member Searching made easy!

XLCubed/ / Reporting & Analytics

Searching for specific elements of large hierarchies can be a real pain in many Analysis Services client tools, and we often hear of it as a major frustration in Pivot Tables where dialogs can be cumbersome and prone to locking up.

XLCubed has both a Quicksearch and an Advanced search in the Member Selector, but in this blog we’ll show how to link the search dynamically to an Excel cell (or a web entry cell on a published report) and to retain the search as a dynamic part of the report rather than a point in time selection.

Let’s say we are a retailer with a large product hierarchy running to tens or hundreds of thousands of products. The naming convention means groups of products can be searched by a partial match on their name, and as a report designer we’d like the users to be able to type the search in as quickly and easily as possible rather than go into a custom search dialog. Here’s how:

Below is the final result in Excel, a simple list-report where the user just types the text they want to search the hierarchy for, and matching products are shown on the rows of the report.

Search1

 

We start with a regular grid, putting Product Categories on rows, and then in the Member Selector we can either select a specific level or set of data to be searched, or go to the Advanced tab and select the whole hierarchy as shown below.

EditHierarchy

 

 

In the advanced dialog, click on the binoculars:

Binoculars

 

to add a search, and then in the dialog below you can either type a search term directly in the ‘Search Value’ or reference an Excel cell, in this case $C$3. ‘Search By’ allows you to specify exact match, begins, contains etc.

Search2

 

At this point it’s worth mentioning that while in this case we are just searching by the name of the product (MEMBER_CAPTION) we could also chose to search by any member properties which exist.

So having done that we simply type the search string into $C$3 and we get the matching products straight away – couldn’t be easier.

To make this available for web deployed reports there are two additional steps:

  • Make $C$3 available for web input. To do that right click on the cell and choose Format cells, and then on the protection tab uncheck ‘locked’.
  • Add a search or refresh hyperlink or button so that the web user can refresh the report when they’ve typed the search term. This can be handled using either XL3Link() or XL3Picturelink and the process is described in our previous blog.

The web version is shown below:

Websearch

Between and Member Searching

XLCubed/ / Reporting & Analytics

Our blog today takes a look at two new features available in v6.5 – Between and Member Searching.

Between

In v6 we give our users  the ability to enter a reporting range for their grid reports by allowing them to enter a  ‘From’ and a ‘To’ range on a hierarchy.

The only thing to remember is that both members have to be at the same level.

So let’s try to put together an example.  Let’s say that we would like to report all data between two dates.

So we edit the hierarchy that should include the range. The hierarchy can also be on the header area of the report as well as on rows or columns.

Under the Advanced tab we click the Clear all icon  

 

before clicking the Member Set icon

 

so that we can enter the From and the To values.

Click OK and our report will show only the members in the range specified.  It’s as simple as that!

Even better for the end-user is the option to enter an Excel range so that they just enter their values into Excel cell locations.

So we’ll run the grid report based on From and To values in $I$3 and $I$4 respectively.

Another great feature of using this option is that we can choose to leave one of the ranges empty.

So if we just enter a value in the Excel cell location for the From date and leave the To date blank the report returns all data from the From date to the latest date available in the hierarchy.

As you can see in the screenshot below we have put FY 2002 in the From range and left the To range empty – so XLCubed returns all data from FY 2002 to latest.

Conversely, leaving the From date blank and entering a value in the To date will return all data from the earliest date available to the To date.  This time XLCubed returns all data until FY 2003.

 

So that’s how you report on a range in XLCubed.

PS Don’t forget both members of your range have to be at the same level in the hierarchy.

 

Member Searching

Another great feature of  v6.5  is the new functionality that allows the user to filter a report by searching for members in a hierarchy.

Let’s show this functionality in action with a simple example.

Our report below shows a simple grid with Geography on rows and Fiscal Years on columns – we’d like to show only those members in the Geography hierarchy (at all levels) that start with B.

 

Click the Advanced tab and then select All Hierarchy Members by clicking:

Click on Member Search and the following window will be displayed:

At this point we have two options:

  • enter a value in the Search Value field – in our example we enter B
  • use Excel range to hold the value that should be used

In our example we are using the value in cell F2 to determine the filtering on our report.

We can determine the ‘search by’ criteria as below – ‘Ends with’, ‘Begins with’, ‘Exact match’ or ‘Contains’:

Additionally, we can choose the ‘Property to search by’:

  • MEMBER_CAPTION (most commonly used)
  • MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME
  • MEMBER_KEY
  • PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME

As you can see the report now only shows those members of the Geography hierarchy that start with B regardless of their level within the hierarchy.

 

This example is based on an entire hierarchy but it is also possible to do the same for a specific set of members, for example, a level or descendants of a specific member.

We hope this short example has shown you how easy it is to use Between and Member Searching within XLCubed reports.