Customised List of Values

Business Objects has many features. In previous articles I already explained some of them — but this next one is quite interesting and well hidden.

Imagine the following situation. You create a query on a database using Business Object. You are an account manager for a certain number of customers, and you only draw information from the database for those customers. But – the list of customers is long. Each time, you have to select YOUR customers from that list. A lot of work. You can create your own list of values, containing only your own customers, so you don’t have to select them from the endless list. Here is how :

Let’s say you had this kind of List of Values(LOV) :

It is a long list, and you only use specific products. You could then create your own list of values, to display only the products YOU work with. First of all, you would need to put those names or numbers in a textfile.

The first line of this file is the title. (If you don’t put anything here, then BO will call the list F1. Not very nice.) Once the file is ready, (containing the customers/products/customercodes), you can then link it to the universe you use by opening Business Objects. Go to the “Tools” menu and choose “Universes”. From the list of universes, select your own Universe.

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And click the button “Lists of Values”

Of course, you need to select :“Personal Data”, which automaticaly puts you in the “file selection” dialog :

here, you browse to the right place on your computer, choose the right delimiter (I used an Enter..so I chose character) and don’t forget to select “First row contains column names”. Confirm with OK. Done.

From now on, when you ask for a list of values on categories, you get :

 

Easy — no ?