Administration Guide

Report Parameters

The majority of standard reports have parameters, which are static or dynamic values you supply to the report, such as start and end dates, grouping and sorting options, etc. In order to generate a report, you must assign values to those parameters.

You specify report parameters when you configure settings for reporting jobs. You can assign static values to report parameters, for example:

  • /"Group_By"="Operating System"
  • /"Minimal Unit Cost"=100
  • /Time=12:00:00

NOTE: If the parameter name or value contains spaces, it must be enclosed in double quotes.

Clearly, static date and time values offer little practical value for automatically generated reports, particularly for date range parameters. This is where you should use macros, as follows:

  • /Date_From=BOLM
  • /Date_To=EOLM
  • /Time=BOD

NOTE: BOLM, EOLM, and BOD are special macros returning the timestamp of the Beginning Of Last Month, End Of Last Month, and Beginning Of (current) Day, respectively. For the list of supported date-time macros and their values, see Help: Date-time macros for parameter values.

Assigning Parameters

When you configure a job for a Microsoft Report Builder report, you just need to click the Build button, and Alloy Navigator Express will automatically prompt you for report parameters. All pre-packaged reports are Microsoft Report Builder reports, also called Report Definition Language (RDL) reports.

In order to enable Alloy Navigator Express to access report parameters, you must have Microsoft Report Viewer 2016 Runtime installed on your local computer. Typically, this component is installed together with Alloy Navigator Express.

NOTE: Microsoft Report Viewer 2016 Runtime requires the Microsoft System CLR Types for SQL Server 2016 component, which is also shipped with Alloy Navigator Express. For details, see Installation Guide: Reporting.