Designing Interactive Reports using Links and Prompt Container

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In my previous article, to design reports versatile, I showed how to use dynamic filters using prompts and actions are useful.

In this post, I will explain how to use links and prompt container to design more user-friendly reports.

1. Links

Links enable the report designer to provide additional context to the data presented in the report without trying to show all the information at once.

Types of Links

Three types of links are available:

1) Page Links - access another page in the same report 

2) Report Links - access another report

3) URL Links - access and view an external web page

Links can be created in the Actions pane:

 

Page Link

Page link is useful for providing detailed data. Additionally, instead of creating a busy page with many objects, you can consider creating multiple pages with fewer objects using page links. Lastly, page links can be used to guide viewers through the report.

In this example, a report has 2 pages. Page 1 contains a Bar Chart and Page 2 contains crosstab to show details data. A page link is defined from Page 1  to Page 2 in Actions pane.

If you view the report and double click a value of the bar chart in Page 1, the following Page 2 will be displayed:

As you might notice, Country is filtered "U.S.A".  In addition, you can click the Incoming filter information button to view the filter.

Tips:

By the default, page type is Basic. If you select page type as Pop-up like following 2 ways,  

the page appears in a window that takes up a portion of the screen. You can click to return to the previous page.

 

Report Link

Using Report link is a good idea to limit the number of pages to make your report easier to access, easier to navigate, and easier to understand for report viewers.

If the target report contains multiple pages, you can specify which page appears first when defining the link like below:

URL Link

URL link enables you to access and view an external web page. You can create a static link to a web page, or an interactive link that passes a value from the report to the web page with a parameter to access web services or other resources. You can find a great article and a video from SAS Visual Analytics Tips & Tricks Series: Working with URL links.

2. Prompt Container

The Prompt Container is limited you can only accommodate prompt controls. The main advantage of Prompt Container is that it helps reduce the amount of space that Control Objects occupy on the report and it is the only way to use a List Control Object in either the Report or Page Prompt Areas.

Additionally, the Prompt Container is the only Container that can be in any location , neither of Report Prompt, Page Prompt, or Report Canvas.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

I hope you now have a good idea of how to use Links and Prompt Container and this article inspires you to create user-friendly reports.

Additional articles:

Filtering in Visual Analytics
Designing Interactive Reports
SAS Visual Analytics Report Examples using Container Objects
Use a List Control as a Visual Analytics Report or Page/Section Prompt
SAS Visual Analytics Tips & Tricks Series: Working with URL links
New control prompt placement option in SAS Visual Analytics

[itames]

very informative. Thanks for sharing