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Community Topic Idea Report Builder

David Registro

APAC SD Team

Eric Hagfors

Yellowfin Support Team

Assigned

Category Report Builder

Product Version 7.3

Make Custom Report Formatting settings inherit Customized Default Report Formatting settings

Jess Bugarin shared this idea ago

Idea Logged

When I switch from Default style formatting to Custom, the selections that appear are not the same as the default values. This causes a lot of extra work, confusion, and it causes reports to not follow set standards.

Example: I want turn wrap off on my headers. When I do so, the header background color changes. It is no longer the default color. Now I have to figure out what the default color is that was used by the administrator in order for my report to look the same as every other report. This also changed the alignment. The admin has set header alignment to left, but the Custom style has it centered. So now I have to remember to change that too.

This applies to column/row formatting as well, not just headers. But it is most noticeable in headers because of the background and alignment difference.

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Replies (8)

Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

Thanks for reaching out. It would be helpful to see before and after screen shots so I know specifically what changes occur after turning the text wrap off, but regardless, I suspect you're on an older build of 7.3 and that this wouldn't occur in latest builds of 7.3 or in 7.4 and 8. We had a considerable amount of formatting related defects pre-7.35 As in our other recent ticket I'm awaiting reply on, it will be important to know what build of 7.3 you're on here.

Regards,

Mike

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

I just wanted to check in and see how things are going with this.

Regards,

Mike

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

I'm going to go ahead and mark this one as Answered since I haven't heard back from you, but if you have further questions or concerns on this, if you respond, it will re-open the case and put it back in my queue and I'll be happy to help.

Regards,

Mike

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Jess Bugarin ●

Hi. I'm in a BMC instance of 7.3 build 2018-04-18

Attached are a series of photos to demonstrate. Photo 1 is what I see when I do nothing. Photo 2 is what I see when I change the row headers from default to Custom, but change nothing within there. Photo 3 is what I get after I've done that. Photo 4 is the default in the Contents area of the system administration. This matches what you see in Photo 1, but not the other Photos.

Files:

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

The "Default" you're seeing when you first open the application is actually a custom Default that's likely set in the Smart Reporting installer as an INSERT statement. Custom settings are a separate configuration, so what you're seeing when you toggle these settings to Custom is the actual Yellowfin Default that you'd see in a standard Yellowfin install.

What likely occurred here is that whoever configured the Smart Reporting Installer options, created the INSERT statement for the Default values here, but left the Custom option unchanged. I'm unsure whether this was done purposefully or not, but it may be worth reaching out to the party responsible for setting these options for further information and seeing whether they can possibly change this, if that is your requirement.

Regards,

Mike

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

I just wanted to check in and see if this answered your question.

Regards,

Mike

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Jess Bugarin ●

Can you clarify. With the Custom option that they probably left unchanged, are you saying that it can be something different but still static and not matching the default set in by the admins, or that they could have made it inherit the default set by the admins (which could change easily from day to day and would still get inherited when this is newly engaged on a new column)?

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

Thanks for your response. I'm saying if the Custom option was set in the Installer to match your Default values, then when you set your Style Formatting to Custom so that you can turn the wrap off of your headers, then it would still otherwise display the same, minus the wrapping, of course. It wouldn't be inheriting settings from the Default styling per se, as they're technically separate configurations, so yes, the Custom formatting can "default" to a separate color/font/general formatting scheme, but it can also be set to be the same as your current styling Default settings. Once any changes are made to the Custom formatting at the report level when editing the report, those settings will then be maintained in that report. If you were to create a new report it would contain your pre-set custom Default values as well as your custom Custom values, if that makes sense.

Regards,

Mike

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Jess Bugarin ●

Ok, then I would still consider this an issue. The Custom styling should default to the Default styling at the time that the Custom styling is applied to the field, and allow the user to adjust from there. It should inherit the current system defaults, not something that is hard coded somewhere and can't easily be adjusted by admins.

Given how it works now, it sounds like we would need our intermediary vendor to make this change for us? It's not something our system admins can do? And does it require a re-install? We're about to upgrade to v8 so if it's something our own admins can adjust I can have them do so before install. But as mentioned above, this still poses an issue if we change our default values (such as header field colors, fonts, shading and so on).

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

What I can say for certain is that what I've described is indeed what's happening here, as after going into the BMC Smart Reporting environment and changing the Report Formatting > Column & Row Headings setting to "Custom", you can see the Background Color is set to our default blue color:

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I guess the question is, is the color the only thing that needs to be changed when you turn off the Wrap Text setting here? If a user is coming into a particular report to turn off the Wrap Text setting, it would only take another couple seconds to change the color back as well.

That said, I do think having the Default Custom settings inherit the values of the Custom Default settings would be a valid enhancement, assuming it's possible - I did reach out for more info on this and it might be the case that Custom settings may not have their own rows in the db until after reports with Custom values are actually saved, meaning you couldn't make this change beforehand, though the dev team would be in a better position to determine the possibilities of doing so, and could do so in the course of considering the enhancement request. As such, I would be happy to put forth an enhancement for this, but please also let me know your feedback on the question above.

Thanks,

Mike

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

I've gone ahead and changed this to an Idea item and submitted an enhancement request to have Custom Report Formatting inherit the Default Report Formatting settings.

Any potential updates regarding this will be posted here.

Regards,

Mike

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Jess Bugarin ●

I have a few concerns with the idea that analysts should be changing the color when they go in to turn the wrap setting off:

Training. This means that all analysts need to be informed about this when they are trained to ensure their reports are consistent with our coloring standards.
The color that we use for that isn't on our color pallet so either users will have to know the hex or we'd have to take up one of the limited spots on the color pallet to make it easily accessible. It's also not a great color for graphs, so we don't really want it on the color pallet.
Extra clicks. Analysts would be responsible for spending extra time and clicks on something that is set as a default by the Admin, but is getting changed when they're trying to adjust one setting on the field.

It is not only the background color that doesn't carry over. I checked the following and they don't carry over either:

Font Face
Font Weight
Text Color
Typography
Alignment

Sorry I'm not responding very quickly. I'm buried in migrating our reports and I honestly didn't realize it had been so many days. I will be out of office until 8/5 (just to explain why it will take a bit to respond next). Thank you.

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Jess Bugarin ●

I overlooked the second message. That sounds wonderful thank you.

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Mike Sheehan ●

Hi Jess,

Yes, it's all Custom vs. Default configurations, not just background color. You're welcome. I'll keep you posted on any potential updates.

Regards,

Mike

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