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Custom Values Wizard Creating your own custom values in a moments notice can be a great blessing when slicing and dicing reports that could give your company the competitive edge. Comparing timelines and periods to view trends is crucial to what every company needs to be on the cutting edge of understanding their data points in a timely fashion. Our Custom Values Wizard is just the user-friendly helper you need to get you there in a hurry. You get to this valuable custom data wizard by clicking on the [...] button just above the up and down arrows on the Report Definition tab. *Note: This button only shows up when you click on the Report Definition tab and have the active cell in the Field Description column.
The Custom Values Wizard allows you wrap up one or more values from your DataSet and turn them into another custom value you choose. Drill-Down Tally provides several examples to get you started. In top entry field you will see several examples in the pulldown box. The example selected for the illustration above is "Grouping data into Quarters from a data field". After selecting this example, Drill-Down Tally will fill in the custom value rows below it. You can see Drill-Down Tally is using the familiar MONTH() function around a date field from your dataset. Your date field data will be converted into a month value of 1 through 12 (the numbers of possible months from a calendar). A helpful field name screen will popup and prompt you to select a field name. This screen will assist you in filling in the needed information to replace [YourDateFieldNameGoesInHere] with a field name from your dataset. In the custom values portion (middle) of the screen, you will see that the number of the month is now transformed into a new field value in the New Alias/Custom Value column. This is the new alias value you are converting your data into. On the first row, anything that has the month value of 1 to 3 will be converted into a value of "1st Qtr". The other month numbers will be converted into their respective values in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rows. The bottom portion of the screen will allow you to treat any other remaining values into one of two options. It is intended to show the effectiveness of the lower portion of the screen and its powerful functionality. This is a great catch all type of custom value. It's a good place to put any other values not accounted for in the middle part of the wizard to be placed into an "Other" custom value (or a name you choose). For the example above, we want to compensate for any Null values that may exist for this field. So these Null values will fall into a "<Null>" category. See the bottom option where it says "Convert any other values to Alias/Custom value:". If you want any other values to remain the same as they are, then choose the top option here. At the very bottom of the screen you will see a checkbox which concerns Group Null value linking issues that may or may not crop up for you. It all depends on the data file type you are using and if it supports Null values. This is an attempt to allow you to convert Null values that can cause problems when linking sub-level groups with null values. If you are having problems with linking groups that have null values, you can click on this box to see if the problem goes away. Other times the program will prompt you to correct this issue when it encounters it. But for most users this will not be a problem. After setting up your new custom values, click [OK] and watch Drill-Down Tally create your new custom values with ease. You can now display this on your report as a Group in the Show As column. You'll see all the supporting records fall into your newly designed categories as you drill-down into your data. Try the other examples in the top pulldown box to see the possibilities with our invaluable Custom Values Wizard. This wizard is really the nexus of building the flexible reports you need. Use it to gain control over your data and your competitor.
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