Talis Decisions Articles

Example Documents

Example Talis Decisions documents for Income Manager reporting  (April 2007)
A set of example Talis Decisions documents that can be used in reporting on Income Manager. There are versions for BusinessObjects 5i and BusinessObjects XI.
Download for 5i: inc_man_reports_bo.exe
Download for XI: inc_man_reports_decisions.exe

Example Talis Decisions documents for CIPFA reporting  (Mar 2005- Updated April 2007)
A set of example Talis Decisions documents that can be used in reporting data to CIPFA. There are versions for BusinessObjects 5i and BusinessObjects XI.
Download for 5i: bo_cipfa.exe
Download for XI: Decisions_cipfa.exe

Example Talis Decisions documents for SCONUL reporting  (Mar 2005 - Updated April 2007)
A set of example Decisions documents that can be used in reporting data to SCONUL. There are versions for BusinessObjects 5i and BusinessObjects XI.
Download for 5i: bo_sconul.exe
Download for XI: Decisions_sconul.exe

Report Writing Techniques

Displaying Averages in Decisions Documents  (Mar 2008)
Within Talis Decisions there is an aggregate function called Average(). This function allows an average to be calculated on a set of values. The Average() function can be added to a table or used within a variable. However when used within a variable the calculation context associated with the variable is very important.
This article outlines how to use the function in different circumstances and the issues involved.

Using the @Prompt function in Freehand SQL  (Jan 2008)
This article describes how to use the @Prompt function with Freehand SQL queries to allow users to enter condition values when a document is refreshed.

Displaying different images in documents  (Dec 2007)
In Talis Decisions it is possible to display images in Web Intelligence. These images are manually defined when creating a document using a URL link. It is possible to make images change depending on prompt values and section values. This can allow the creation of more dynamic reports.

Setting up Dynamic Report Filters  (Oct 2007)
When refreshing a Web Intelligence document in Talis Decisions that has a date range it is necessary to change that date range manually. This makes it difficult to schedule documents to refresh on a regular ongoing basis for defined but changing date periods e.g. last full week. This article outlines an approach to limiting the data displayed by report filters to the last x days, last full week, week to date, last full month, week to date, last quarter, quarter to date, last full year and year to date. The article also includes details for implementing the same filters in Desktop Intelligence.

Creating mailing labels in Talis Decisions  (Sep 2006 - updated Sep 2007)
This article details a way of producing mailing labels in Talis Decisions. An example report mailinglabels.rep is available.
Download: mailinglabels.zip

Displaying days of the week in Talis Decisions  (Aug 2006 - Updated Sep 2007)
How to insert day of week names into Decisions reports.

Displaying Month Names in Talis Decisions  (Oct 2005 - Updated Sep 2007)
How to insert month names into Talis Decisions reports.

Synchronising Queries in Talis Decisions  (Oct 2005 - Update Sep 2007)
An introduction on how to join two or more queries within Talis Decisions.

Filtering #EMPTY values in Talis Decisions  (Oct 2005 - Update Sep 2007)
How to filter #EMPTY values within a Talis Decisions.

Modifying SQL in Talis Decisions  (Aug 2005 - Updated Sept 2007)
How to modify the SQL conditions in a query in Talis Decisions.

Running freehand SQL statements in Talis Decisions  (May 2005 - Updated Sep 2007)
How to run freehand SQL statements in Talis Decisions.

System Scripts and Management

Running the wel_update script automatically  (Feb 2005)
How to run wel_update within a UNIX shell script to automatically build statistics for the full week before the date that the script is run on.
Download: build_week_agg.sc.gz

Decisions (5i only)

Talis Decisions Housekeeping (5i)  (Feb 2007)
This article describes how to maintain your Talis Decisions system when powered by BusinessObjects 5i.

Installing Business Objects Reporter  (Jan 2005)
Instructions for installing Business Objects Reporter and other 5i client tools on a new PC.

Rebuilding the BOMain.key file in Business Objects 5i  (May 2005)
How to rebuild the BOmain.key file in an installation of BusinessObjects or WebIntelligence.

Performance improvements for WebIntelligence 2.7 (5i)  (Mar 2006)
Details on settings within the WebIntelligence Administration tool that can be changed to improve performance.