I have three controls that I would like to chain on an HTML page.

There are FISCAL YEAR, BUSINESS UNIT and DEPARTMENT.

Currently BUSINESS UNIT and DEPARTMENT are chained so that only departments in the selected business unit are displayed in the list box.

Now we want to further restrict the data to only the BUSINESS UNIT/DEPARTMENT combinations that have values for the FISCAL YEAR.

I am trying to implement in composer with no luck. When I chain FISCAL YEAR to further restrict DEPARTMENT, it changes the "resolves parameter" setting for both chains to FISCAL YEAR.

I know that I could accomplish this by using a dynamic datasource fex for DEPARTMENT but is there any way to do so with chaining in composer?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Have you thought about using a procedure to populate the year box?

Hi Ginny,

Populating the year is not the problem. And it is populated with a dynamic embedded procedure, not a fex.

My challenge is using both FISCAL YEAR and BUSINESS UNIT to chain (restrict value) of the DEPARTMENT. I seem to be able to do either but not both.

Does this make sense to you?

I think I would chain the year to the Business Unit, and then chain the Business Unit to the Department.

Hi RF!

I don't think that is what I need either.

If I chain the year to the business unit then it gives me all business units with data for that fiscal year. But in my scenario, every business unit has data. So in this instance, that chain would have no effect.

What I want to do is restrict the department to the business unit selected AND the fiscal year selected.

I hope I am explaining myself clearly.

If you wrote a procedure to populate the department box, you could do that. You would have WHERE clauses for the business unit and year selected.

Populating a dropdown box using a procedure is available in the HTML Layout Painter.

Thanks Ginny.

That is the only way I know to do it. But my team wants to make sure that it cannot be accomplished with chaining before we do that.

You can do chaining with a procedure. This is documented in the "Using Custom Procedures to Retrieve Dynamic Values" section of the "Developing Reporting Applications With Graphical Tools" manual.

knegrotto,

Have you tried the 3-link-chain method - I believe it should work for you; I have done the same thing previously, like this:

Control_1 - inchainindex="1"
Control_2 - inchainindex="2"
Control_3 - inchainindex="3"

You should also see in your code a script like the following:

<script id=IBI_ChainScript type=text/javascript>
< !--
window.chain0=new Array(1);
window.chain0[0]=new String("Control_1_id;Control_2_id;Control_3_id");
window.chain0[1]=0
//--></SCRIPT>

Control 2 is independent of control 1, but control 3 is dependent on both control 1 and control 2.

Let us know if you try that and can't get it to work. . .

Rob

Hi
I have tried to follow your instruction. I was not able to implement the Control 2 is independent of control 1, but control 3 is dependent on both control 1 and control 2.

Can you describe little bit in detail how to perform this task? I went through all the ibi documentation for this?
Hope to hear from you soon.