Cognos Auto Multi Select Cascading Issues


I tried to implement below solution to achieve multi cascading prompt requirement when there are more than 2 dependent prompts:-

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ba-pp-reporting-scripting_techniques-page673/

It worked beautifully on IE with Cognos 10.2.2 FP3 along with sorting function. There is one issue users came back with in this approach.

Issue # 1
1. It was not working on Report page. To solve this, created a small lookup table for prompts and use back button on report page to go back to Prompt Page.  In Query itself, created a dummy query to get ALL combinations. Used it to union with prompt data query to get it in multi cascading selection.

Issue # 2

Second issue popped up as we press Back button, JavaScript runs again and populate all possible values in child prompts though selected values are still highlighted. This results in situation when user can select a combination from child prompt to get zero records. As soon as User clicks on any parent prompts, script works again but it is kind of additional click and interrupt flow for interactivity.

To solve this, 
  • Created queries for each prompt sourcing from Prompt Main query.
  • Highest level prompt doesn't have any filter so it will always get populated with all possible values. This will prevent dropping other values while coming back from report page
  • Other two child prompts and have optional filter enabled using their respective parent value with default ALL selection .  

That's it. It worked fine in all scenario without using "auto submit" feature or any change to JavaScript.




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