ReportWORQ has extended support for iterating across parameters to generate and distribute reports to those who need it at exactly the right time.
During distribution, ReportWORQ normally creates worksheets or files for every combination of parameters that are available based on their defined values. This can possibly create an extremely large number of iterations, or it might create combinations that do not make any sense.
(Do we really need to see how many winter coats were sold in Jamaica??)
To avoid the above, ReportWORQ allows you to create distinct and finite sets of parameter combinations.
To accomplish this, ReportWORQ uses the pipe “|” character on the Parameter Target Location and Parameter Values area. During Calculation, this is used to perform a spread operation to multiple cells for each iteration.
For the following example, imagine that we need to send reports to a company that only has its sales in the US & Germany, its Administration group in the UK, and its Finance group in Canada. Creating iterations for every single combination of the above intersections does not make sense.
To learn how to narrow down our intersections, see the following example…
In the following example, a Parameter target has two pipe delimited cells defined instead of having a single cell target definition. In this case, the Business Unit value is in cell C5 and Department value is in cell C6.
Defining specific parameter value configurations for the above parameter set will produce 4 worksheets with the specified combinations of Business Unit and Department. This is exactly the combination we need instead of producing an extra 12 combinations which would not be useful.
Please note that the above is only compatible with cell based and not specification-based reports.
Take a look at the documentation on Configuring Distinct Parameter Sets, Bursting Reports and Scheduling to learn more about how ReportWORQ can get the right data to the right people, right on time.