Working with prompted reports

You can limit the data in your report by using filters. Report authors use prompts to allow users to provide input to filter and retrieve data. For example, through the use of prompted reports users can select a product type. Only products belonging to the selected product type are retrieved and shown in the report. By using IBM® Cognos® for Microsoft Office, users can answer prompts from imported report elements.

IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office supports prompt controls that are added to a prompt page of a report. A prompt page is like a report page.

If the report that you want to import contains unanswered prompts, the prompts are displayed before the report data is rendered. If you have set and saved default answers for the prompts, IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office uses those answers.

The following types of prompts are not supported:

  • Prompts using context filters
  • Prompts that are directly inserted into the report page

    These prompt controls are interactive and provide parameter values before a report is run. As a result, prompt controls added to a report page appear only when a report is run in HTML format.

  • Cascading prompts that use values from one prompt to filter values in another prompt

    For example, the report author created prompts for certain columns in the report, and specified that the Product type prompt is a cascading prompt that uses Product line as the cascading source. When users select a product line, they see only the product types related to the selected product line.