Exception Reporting in the Report Portfolio
Exceptions are of importance in two instances in the report portfolio. Firstly they are used to portray the report lists in color. Secondly they are used to color reports and report classes in the graphic menu. The procedure for creating exceptions is described in the cross-application online documentation
Drilldown Reporting.Displaying Exceptions in Report Portfolio Reports
The following points should be noted when presenting report lists:
If a report is stored as a data report in the report portfolio, a copy of the drilldown report is saved simultaneously in the report portfolio. That means that in the report portfolio report the colors are exactly the same. You see the colors at a certain point in time. These are never updated.
If a report is transferred as a definition report into the report portfolio, the exceptions defined for the drilldown report are also transferred. These exceptions are then evaluated in the report portfolio every time new data is selected, just as they would be in drilldown reporting.
Using menu option Report portfolio
® Rep. portfolio report ® Change, you can create, change and delete exceptions in the report portfolio report, just as in drilldown reporting (see below).Displaying Exceptions in the Hierarchy Graphic
Colors are assigned to reports and report classes in the graphical menu as follows:
Reports and report classes are all assigned default colors which apply if no exception is defined, or if the exception is in the "normal" state (has not been exceeded or fallen short of). Red and green are not valid default colors as these are reserved for values which have either exceeded or fallen short of an exception. If you use exceptions, we recommend that you use yellow as the default color. This means that reports and report classes which are in a "normal" state will appear yellow in the hierarchy graphic. This traffic light effect enables an immediate overview of the status of the different reports and report classes.
An important difference between displaying exceptions in the graphical menu and in a report list is that the exceptions have to be evaluated before the report is executed. In a report list, the exceptions can, of course, be evaluated when you execute the report. When you display a graphical overview of several reports in the hierarchy graphic, you have not yet executed the reports. It is not possible to evaluate the exceptions in all the reports when you display the graphical menu. This is because of the effect it would have on performance The exceptions can be evaluated using a job which saves the data in background processing. The flag Check exceptions, which can be found under Information system
® Report data ® Maintain variants controls whether the exceptions should be evaluated in background processing. See Freezing Report Data and Printing Reports in the BackgroundUsing Information system
® Report portfolio ® Rep.portfolio report ® Change, you can change exceptions in a report. Using this function, you also define which exceptions are relevant for the graphical menu. The dialog box in which you process the exceptions contains the function Graphical menu. This function offers three options: Display red and green, Not to be used and Display red. The default setting is Display red and green, which means that the exception is highlighted in the graphic whether it is red or green. If more than one exception has been defined, red has priority over green which has priority over normal.Let us assume that a report was created with three exceptions and then executed in the background. The first exception was in the state green, the second normal, and the third red. The date and time when the exceptions were evaluated is also recorded.
If, in the above example, we set parameter Display red and green for the first exception and parameter Not to be used for the second and third exceptions, the report would appear green in the graphical menu.
The color of the definition report in the graphic is passed on to the report class to which the report belongs. That means that, if just one of the reports in a report class is red, the whole report class is colored red.
Evaluation of the Exceptions with Different Combinations of Variables
A closer look is required when the exceptions for a report with variables are evaluated in the background.
It is possible, with such reports, that for one variable group several combinations of variables are checked one after the other.
You have defined fiscal year and region as variables and want to check the exceptions for
a. ) fiscal year 1995, region North and
b.) fiscal year 1996, region South.
.
In the first case the report is in the "red" state, but in the second it is in the "green" state. The color with the highest priority in the hierarchy graphic is displayed for you in the report portfolio, in this case "red". (The rule is that red takes priority over green and normal).
When you execute the report a dialog window appears for the variable entry. With the function Variable (Exception), the respective variable combination, which is responsible for the coloring of the hierarchy graphic, is set in the entry fields. In our example therefore, the Fiscal Year 1995 and Region North are set as variables.
Display Exceptions
If you choose the menu option Display exceptions in the report portfolio report, information about the last time the exceptions were evaluated in background processing is displayed. The list contains the date and time as well as a color for each exception. You can therefore see which exceptions have led to which color in the hierarchy graphic.
You can find more detailed information about the state of an exception under Extras
® Report parameters. Here you can see on which sheet of the report an exception has a certain state. When, for example, you have an exception which is of importance on various sheets of a report you can see that the state varies. It could be green on sheet 1, normal on sheet 2, and red on sheet 3.