This post is sort of a continuation/new question from my initial post Original Post. So we now have Dev Studio and are in the process from moving from our mainframe environment to a windows environment. In doing so I am having to create new launch pages and what not for reports. I build a page using the HTML composer tool in dev studio, but I am not able to pass a variable to use it for the dynamic selection of reports. This is where things are similar to my original post, where I was able to handle this with a DM loop. However, I cannot seem to have dev studio not automatically make the control box pass with an 'OR' between each of the values. Am I just missing something here or is this something that the composer cannot do and I have to look at coding this manually?

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

We allow a control to be populated with procedure names in release 8.

My 'standard technique' over several clients has been to use a 'router.fex'. Populate a dropdown with a static list something like:

 
Value     Display
RPT01     Cars by Country
RPT02     Employees by Department
 

and bind this control to a parameter &ReportCode

Create router.fex that contians

 

-GOTO  &ReportCode.EVAL

-EXIT

-RPT01;

-INCLUDE app/carbyctry

-EXIT

-RPT02;

-INCLUDE app/employee

-EXIT

Now set up your button/autorun to call the 'router', not the actual report. My clients seem to like the ease of maintenance and the ability to add new items into the 'router'.

Thanks Robert. I was thinking something along the lines of your example but how did you handle if the users want to run the reports to create a compound report and not just one report option? Using your example, if the multi-select is set to yes and they choose RPT01 & RPT02? When I did this before through our mainframe connection, I was able to set up the DM loop and check for the number of selections and loop through them all to create the compound or bypass the loop if only one selection was chosen. I am not seeing that I will have the ability to give the users that type of flexibility.

@David - We are still in the process of implementing 7.7.03 here, so I do not see us moving to release 8 any time soon. But that is good to know that the feature is there.

I would just change the Dropdown to a multi select list box and use GETTOK to parse out the list of reports. Then use the same looping technique.

If you want to get real fancy, use a double list box. The left side holds the list of available reports, and the user just selects the ones they want that way.

Thanks Robert. I will give those a shot.

Oooooooh! Robert, I like this a lot! It saves an enormous amout of hassle creating a main page with dozens of links to the individual launch pages.

It will also allow me to create not just one but probably 3 or 4 list boxes according to the sort/selection criteria and to put an explanation of those sorts/selections beside each list box.

The one problem with a "router" fex is running it in deferred mode. We have 8 parameter screens with exactly the same parameters - just different reports. I wanted to use a "router" idea but soon realized that the report name in the Deferred Reports window is the name of the router fex.