Filter like Excel?

I'm trying to convert all of my company's excel report to birt. One of the main requirement is that the header row should have a drop down selection box data filter like excel. I gone through the docs on birt designer and could not find such features. This seems like such a obvious feature to have, am I looking at the wrong place to add this filter?

can somebody please point me to the right direction?

thanks!

Kevin

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mwilliams

Hi Kevin,

I have not seen that done before. In Actuate BIRT's Interactive Viewer, you could use the JSAPI to embed dynamic content into your report. With Eclipse BIRT, you could probably still do it, but it would be a little more painful and the report would have to refresh with each change.

You could do something similar with cascading parameters as well. You could have drop down boxes on your parameter page for the different fields and use these parameters to do your filtering.

mu664life

thanks for your input mwilliams.

I guess there is no real ways to copy excel's features. Maybe instead I should just make excel as a default return format then try to modify that.

again, thanks for your help

Virgil Dodson

Hi Kevin, 
 
BIRT doesn't have an auto-filter feature like Excel, but there is a commercial viewer from Actuate that will allow the user to filter table columns. 
 
A screenshot is enclosed, but you can try it yourself on this report: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://demo.birt-exchange.com/iportal/executereport.do?__executableName=/LinkedExamples/EclipseCon2009/EclipseConSessionAttendance.rptdesign&invokesubmit=true'>EclipseCon Session Attendance Report</a> 
 
Once you are looking at the report, press the drop-down and select Enable Interactivity. Then you can select a column and press Filter. (see pictures) 
 
If your users actually prefer spreadsheet output, then you should look at the e.Spreadsheet Designer. That tool connects to a database, and delivers real spreadsheets through your application, and can include auto-filters (see picture) These spreadsheets can be delivered from your same java web application using e.Spreadsheet Engine, or BIRT/e.Spreadsheet report support is available with Deployment Kit or iServer Express out-of-the-box. 
 
Let me know if there are any questions

boblied

Regarding this last picture with spreadsheet designer: this is almost what I'm
trying to do. I've enabled autofilter on a row, but one column is really grouped
and will expand into multiple columns in the Excel spreadsheet. The autofilter
doesn't seem to grow with the expanded rows -- it only extends as far as columns
that were present on the design view. Any suggestions?