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When copying a report, I cannot change the result grouping or ordering
Answer ID 1951   |   Last Review Date 10/31/2018

Why are the Result Grouping or Result Ordering options grayed out on a copy of a canned report?

Environment:

Analytics

Issue:

When I try to change the Result Grouping or Result Ordering on the copy of a canned report, the options are grayed-out and I am unable to make the change.

Resolution:

You can copy the standard reports in your application. This allows you to modify the copy of the report and customize it as you need to.

When you copy a report that includes the date grouping function, the copy of the report has the Result Grouping and Data Sorting features disabled.

  • The date grouping feature is listed as a drilldown filter to access the lower level of the report. The drilldown filter is of the form date_group(fieldname, ‘$date_grp_param’).
     
    To access the filter, change the Level menu to the appropriate level of the report and from the Level tab, review the Drilldown Settings. To modify the filter, from the Level tab, click Edit.
        

Many standard reports use the date grouping feature. When the date grouping option is used as an output column, the report also includes a run-time filter so that the user can specify the time units to use for grouping the result data.

For example, when date grouping is used, the person generating the report can set the Date Grouping filter to be Year/Month, Year/Month/Day, or Day of Week among many other time-related intervals.

When the $date_grp_param function is used, that output column must be the last item in the Result Grouping and Sort (Result Ordering) sections. In order to prevent problems from occurring, when you copy a standard report, the Result Grouping and data sorting and ordering sections are disabled (grayed-out) such that you cannot change the order of these options.

Customizing the date grouping default: 

  • Open the report for editing.  From the Report Outline, right click on the $date_grp_param in the Output Variables section. In the pop-up window, change the default field to be the time period of interest when running the report.   


Sorting output of the report: If you want to change the default ordering of the report results, you must first remove the date grouping feature. You can then replace it with other formatting.

If you would like to keep the date grouping functionality so that the Date Grouping menu is still available, you can generate the report as it is configured (with the grouping and sorting options grayed out). Then, when viewing the results, right click and select Sort and you can specify which field to sort the data by.