Report Desk: Customizing the List of Available Reports
Versions: 8.6 and Above
Background
Prior to Report Desk, the selection of a menu option to run a report usually resulted in a legacy-style parameter input screen like the following:
This list contains the original Legacy report (line 1) and two Report Desk reports (lines 2 and 3). At this point, the user can choose any of the listed reports to create a report.
Sometimes, however, it may not be desirable to show all of the available reports in the list. For example, the customer has created a modified version of a Report Desk report and wants their users to run the modified version only, Or, perhaps the individual user has reviewed the reports in the list and knows he or she will want to exclude one or more of them from the list. Elliott provides ways to hide reports in the list.
Multiple Ways to Affect the List of Available Reports
Global, Administrative Methods
- Company specialized control: Your administrator for Elliott can enable or disable Report Desk globally as discussed here: Report Desk: Setup and Configuration.
- Specifying eligible users: Which users can use Report Desk is discussed here: Report Desk: Setup and Configuration .
- Manual configuration: The administrator in charge of configuring Elliott can manually edit EL860U.Cfg to affect the list of Report Desk reports for any given report in Elliott. See the following article for details: Report Desk: Overriding Standard Reports.
- Hiding reports for all users: See the same-named section below.
Individual, User Methods
- User Preferences: Each user has the ability to ignore Report Desk reports altogether. Making this happen is described here: Report Desk: Ignoring All Report Desk Reports.
- Hiding a report for a particular user: See the same-named section below.
Hiding Reports for All Users
If the customer determines that the want to hide certain reports from all users, this procedure can be followed:
- Log in as SUPERVISOR. This means changes made will apply to ALL users.
- Run the Elliott task and bring up the list of reports.
- Click on the Manage list... button. The list will expand to include a checkbox column on the left:
Notice the status line at the bottom indicates that changes made here will apply to ALL users, because SUPERVISOR is making this change.
- Click on a checkbox to hide a report from the list:
- Click the Save button to save any changes. It will return to the list, but this time the "hidden" report will be grayed out. SUPERVISOR can run grayed-out reports, but other users cannot::
Note that, for non-SUPERVISOR users, the report will be hidden from the list altogether.
Hiding a Report for a Particular User
If we now log out of Elliott and log back in as any user other than SUPERVISOR and bring up the list, the list will appear like this, only showing the two non-hidden reports:
Suppose the user wants to hide the legacy report from appearing on this list. To make that happen, click on the Manage list... button and click the checkbox for the first line in the list:
Notice the status message at the bottom which indicates that any changes you make are for you only.
Now let's imagine that you want the middle report in this list to appear in your list. If you try to uncheck it, you will see this message:
You cannot uncheck a report that SUPERVISOR does not want anyone to use.
Press the Save button, and the list appears with just one report:
Now, when the List menu item is selected, you will see the only report that you can run.
Of course, you can use the Manage list... button at any time to change the list again.
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