How to use new Dynamic Default Value for Universe (UNX) Prompts feature

First of all, I want to thank SAP team for listening to its customers and making possible the so long-awaited feature of Dynamic Default Values for Universe Prompts.

I’ve just tested it from SAP Business Intelligence 4.1 SP6 and let me tell you, this new feature works like a charm.

Let´s see how it works.

1. Suppose you have a report with the following query and you want it to automatically bring yesterday’s date as first parameter and tomorrow’s date as last parameter:

You could transform the date values in standard prompts but you’ll have to type the dates manually.

Or you could transform them in the new dynamic prompts.

2. To achieve this, open Information Design Tool, open your universe and go to Parameters options.

Create the following parameters: MyStartDate and MyEndDate

2.1 Configure MyStartDate:

As you can see we have a formula like CurrentDate()-1 in Default Values area.  We were able to insert this formula because when you press the button

a new Formula Editor window is displayed. This Formula Editor comes with a wide range of predefined functions that certainly will help you save a lot of time creating formulas.

Press Ok. Then, uncheck “Keep Last values” checkbox, because we don’t want the same static value every single time, we want it to change when we refresh our report.

Apply following settings to the other parameter

Create your formula with the formula editor and uncheck this option:

5.Save and publish universe

6.Open your webi report

7. Select Prompt:

Select following option to configure our first prompt:

Select “Parameter from universe” option, then choose “MyStartDate”.

8. Repeat step 7 for the second prompt, just that you have to choose “MyEndDate”.

Then our query will look like this:

10. Execute. You will see that by default Parameter 1 brings yesterday, and Parameter 2 bring tomorrow’s date, without losing the ability of introducing other dates if you want to do that.

11. Save your report.

This is it. Now you are ready to Schedule your report.

With the right formula you will be able to say goodbye to that boring situation when you have to change the dates manually every single month.