Back Forward Summary View form
Completing the Content tab

About Summary View rules

 zzz Show all 

Complete this tab to define which objects are selected for the display and how they are sorted and aggregated.

Most processing defined on this tab is performed by database software such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, not by Process Commander software.

TipThis tab is wide. To display more of the content, click the collapse arrow (Collapse) in the portal to temporarily hide the navigation panel. When you finish working with this tab, click the expand arrow (Expand) to display the navigation panel again.

 zzz Category

Field

Description

Category

SmartPromptOptional. To assign a category to this report, select from the SmartPrompt list. This list shows field value rules with Rule-Obj-SummaryView as the first key part and pyCategory as the second key part. You can create field value rules in your application to define additional categories.

Select one of seven standard categories to cause this report to be listed in a corresponding group on the Monitor Activity workspace, (and so visible and available to all users who can access this workspace). For example, choose WorkAnalysis to list this report in the Analyze Quality area. See A developer's view of the Monitor Activity workspace.

Fixed Header? Select to prevent the header from scrolling if a user scrolls the drill down listing.
Move Group By Caption to Header? Select to present the Caption value from the current Group By element in the display header.

 zzz Criteria

If you leave the Criteria array empty, the summary view report selects all instances of the class, up to the limit in the Maximum Value field.

CautionIn the Field field, you can specify only properties that correspond to exposed columns in the PegaRULES database. By default, custom properties in your application are not exposed; they are stored in a Storage Stream (BLOB) column. However, in many cases you can expose a Single Value property as a database column, after which it can be entered in the Field field. See How to expose a property as a column.

Field

Description

Criteria

Each row of this array identifies a selection criterion. The order of rows in this array is not significant. Process Commander converts information in this array to an SQL WHERE clause.

CautionYou can specify only Single Value properties in the Field field. Each property you identify for selection criteria must be exposed as a column in the database table.

Label

Add rowOptional. Enter a letter or letters that uniquely identifies this row, to reference this row in the Logic field.

For example, enter A for the first row, B for the second row, and so on. The Logic value must mention each label.

Field

SmartPromptEnter a property reference for a comparison. For exposed properties defined in the class identified by the Applies To key part of this summary view rule, start the property reference with a period. You can also identify fully qualified values on other clipboard pages that are always present on the clipboard, such as the requestor page or process page.

NoteIf the Type of this property is TextEncrypted, special instructions apply to the Condition, Value, and Edit Input fields. See Property rules — Implementing and using the TextEncrypted Type.

NoteIf you enter .pxObjClass here and the Applies To key part of this list view rule is a framework class, at runtime the report execution can use the corresponding implementation class, not the framework class, for comparisons and report content. This feature eliminates the need to copy each framework class-based list view report into the implementation class. To enable this capability, select the Report on Descendant Class Instances check box on this tab.

Caption

Optional. Enter text to name this row of the array. If you do not specify a caption, the Field name will be used.

Condition

Select a comparison condition, such as Is Equal or Starts With.

Value

Enter one of the following options as a comparison value:

  • A literal constant, formatted in accordance with the property type. See Constants in expressions. To compare the Field value with multiple literal constants, surround each with double quote characters and separate each with a comma. Place a backslash character / before any double quote character that appears within the constant. As described below, you can click the magnifying glass icon (Magnifying glass) in some situations to review current clipboard values for the property identified in the Field field.
  • A fully qualified property reference to a Single Value property that is present on the clipboard at runtime. The Type of this property must match the Type of the property in the Field field.
  • A fully qualified property reference to a Value List or Value Group property present on the clipboard at runtime. The Type of this property must match the Type of the property in the Field field. To compare the Field value with multiple Value List or Value Group properties, separate each property name with a comma.
  • The keyword param followed by a period, followed by a parameter that is defined on the parameter page of the calling activity.
  • A period followed by the name of a Single Value property that is exposed as a column. This allows comparison of the values of two properties in the same instance (database row), if the types are identical or comparable.
  • A symbolic date, for a Date or DateTime value. When the list value rule executes, this symbolic reference is converted to an actual date or date range based on the time zone of the user and the Condition value. For example, if the user selects Last Year and the Condition value is IS EQUAL TO, the result is a date range between January 1 and December 31 inclusive, of the previous calendar year.

If the Condition field is set to IS NULL or IS NOT NULL, leave this field blank.

Commas correspond to an OR test: if the Value field contains two or more entries separated by commas, the comparison is true at runtime if the value of the Field field equals (or is greater than, or is contained in, and so on) any one of the entries.

Similarly, when the Value field contains a Value List or Value Group property reference, the comparison is true at runtime if the value of the Field field is true for any element in the list or group.

When evaluating either of the two Condition values Greater or Greater or Equal at runtime, the result is the same as applying the test to the largest value in a list or group. Similarly, when evaluating the Condition values Less or Less or Equal at runtime, the result is the same as applying the test to the smallest value in the group or list. The Value List and Value Group options are most useful for other condition values, such as Contains or Starts with.

Using the Pick Values pop-up window

For guided assistance in completing this field, click the magnifying glass icon (Magnifying glass). A pop-up window appears with one or more of these tabs:

  • Available Values — The system searches the column in the database corresponding to the property in the Field field to collect and display up to 1,000 values for the Field property in a new window. To add literal values to the Value field, check one or more boxes and click  Apply  . (You can also type literal constants directly, whether or not they appear on this list.) This tab appears at runtime only to users who hold the standard privilege @baseclass.ShowStoredValues. For such users, it is visible at runtime when the Display Available Values? box in the Prompt Settings area is selected.
  • Valid Values — The system presents values from the Table Edit tab of the property rule referenced in the Field field. To add literal values to the Value field, check one or more boxes and click  Apply  . This tab appears at runtime when the Display Valid Values? box in the Prompt Settings area is selected.
  • Compatible Columns — The system lists exposed properties with the same Type as the property in the Field field, as candidates for this field. This tab appears at runtime when the Display Compatible Columns? box in the Prompt Settings area is selected.
  • Time Periods — For a property of type Date or DateTime, allows the selection of a symbolic date such as Yesterday or Current Year.
Default Value

Enter a comparison value to be used when you do not specify a value in the Value field.

Edit Input

SmartPromptOptional. Identify an edit input rule to convert the value from the format supplied by the expression in the Value field to another format.

Ignore Case

Select to cause runtime tests or comparisons of the Field value and the Value value to occur after the system converts both to uppercase. In this situation, "a" matches "A" and is less than "B".

Clear to cause tests of the Field value and the Value value to occur without case conversion. In this case, "a" is greater than "A" and also greater than "B"

CautionIn most cases, leave this box cleared. Select this box only when required to obtain the rows of the report. For example:

  • If your PegaRULES database is hosted by Microsoft SQL Server, comparisons are always in uppercase, so selecting this box does not affect the report contents.
  • If your PegaRULES database is hosted by Oracle, IBM UDB or most other database vendor products, selecting this box can affect which rows appear in the report, when values occur in mixed case. However, conversion to uppercase can significantly slow database processing.
  • Case conversion is meaningful only for properties of type Text, Identifier or Password. Regardless of database software, case conversion is not needed when you know the values are numeric, dates, or hold text in only uppercase or only lowercase.
See Pega Developer Network article PDNPRKB-25515 How to correct the Case Insensitive warning for summary view rules.
Use Null*

This box is meaningful only when the value in the Value field is not a constant. By default, if the value in the Value field is null at runtime, the criterion defined by this row is ignored; processing is the same as if this row is not present.

For example, assume the criteria in a row is:

IsNull Example

If this summary view rule executes at a time when Param.Letter has the value "C", this criterion limits the report to contain only instances in which the Lastname property value starts with the letter C. However, if the same summary view rule executes again when the Param.Letter parameter has no value, this criterion is dropped, so instances with any Lastname value (or none) are selected.

In situations where this default behavior is not desirable, select the Use Null* box to force the Condition value to become Is Null when the Value value is blank at runtime. In the above example, the criterion is transformed to "Lastname is null" — quite different from having no restriction on Lastname.

Logic

Optional. Using the labels entered in the Criteria array, enter a logical expression that defines how the system combines the criteria into an overall Boolean value at runtime. The expression can include parentheses and the operators AND and OR.

For example, if the table contains four rows labeled A, B, C, and D, you can enter:

(A OR B OR C) AND D

in this field. This notation is the same as for the logic statement in when condition rules.

If you leave the Logic field blank, the system selects only instances for which all criteria rows are true.

Convert criteria values from Locale values?

Select to cause the system to convert of certain input values for parameters from a locale-specific format to the internal representation. When selected, the system attempts to convert literal values or parameter value for numbers (Integer, Double, or Decimal), DateTime, and Date, specified in the Criteria section or trend section from a locale-specific format.

If not selected, enter parameter values and literal values for DateTime parameters in the form MM/DD/YY HH:MM AAA.

When selected, conversion from the locale-specific format occurs before the activity specified in the Activity Name field runs. The system applies any edit input rules specified in the Criteria array after the conversion but before the activity runs.

For example, if the user's locale is FR (France), an input of 3,142 for a Decimal criterion corresponds to the input 3.142 from a user with a United States locale. Similarly, a user in France may input of 4/7/6 for July 4, 2006. A United States user enters this date as 7/4/6. The French-locale user can enter 1.000.000 for an Integer value of one million.

 zzz Prompt Settings

Click the Configure button to view or alter prompt settings. These determine the extent to which report users at runtime can view or alter report criteria.

When one or more criteria allow All Access or Value Only, the Customize Summary Criteria link appears at runtime.

NoteIf a user adds a summary view report to the Monitor Activity workspace as a favorite, and the summary view is an interactive chart that allows selection criteria to be changed, and the Display criteria with results? option is selected, a Save Preferences button appears at runtime. The user can save criteria values for later reuse. See WorkManager portal — Working in the Monitor Activity workspace.

(no label)

Select whether to use the default prompt settings or define custom settings.

AdvancedWhen you select Custom, the form changes. Identify on the Pages & Classes tab the class and page name of a page that can hold prompt values. Create and reference a section rule in that class to collect each prompt value. Use the standard HTML property rule Reporting_SymbolicDates if you want to allow the user to select a symbolic date for a Date or DateTime property. You can also identify a section to hold report output and criteria values.

Label

This label corresponds to the label defined in the criteria row.

Property

This field is corresponds to the field specified in the criteria row.

Prompt Mode

SmartPromptSelect a value to determine how a user of this report can modify the criterion in this row, when either prompted before report execution or through use of the Customize Summary Criteria link:

  • No Access — No part of this row is visible in either prompting or the Customize Summary Criteria display.
  • Read Only — The criterion row is visible but users cannot alter the criteria.
  • All Access — The criterion appears. Users can change the Field, Condition, and Value fields.
  • Value Only — The criterion appears. Users can change the Value field.
Prompt user before executing the report?

Select to cause the criteria to appear before the summary view report executes to users who request this report.

NoteWhen selected, at least one Criteria row must allow user input; the Prompt Mode for at least one row must not be No Access or Read Only.

Display criteria with the results?

Select to cause the criteria (both prompts and values) to appear at runtime as part of the report output.

TipAs a best practice to avoid confusion or error, select this option if the report user is allowed to change report selection criteria. If not selected, the output for a single report may vary from user to user for no easily detected reason — because the users have different saved criteria.

Display Available Values?

Select to display at runtime a list of up to 1,000 values for a property referenced in the Field field. The system searches saved instances of the class until it finds 1,000 distinct values.

User selections are recorded in the Value field for the current execution of the report. This check box is meaningful only when you selected Prompt user? and one or more rows of the criteria allow users to enter values.

Display Valid Values?

Select to display at runtime a list of values based on the Table Edit area of the General tab of the property referenced in the Field field.

User selections are recorded in the Value field for the current execution of the report. This check box is meaningful only when Prompt user? is selected and one or more rows of the criteria allow users to enter values.

Display Compatible Columns?

Select to display at runtime a list of properties eligible for comparison. These are properties in the Applies To class (or an ancestor class) that are exposed as columns and match the Type of the property referenced in the Field field.

User selections are recorded in the Value field for the current execution of the report. This check box is meaningful only when Prompt user? is selected and one or more rows of the criteria allow users to enter property names.

Search Button Label

Enter a text string to display on the search button.

 zzz Group By

Define in this array one or more properties to become summary break levels. Order is significant.

Field

Description

Group by

zzz

Field

SmartPromptIdentify the properties to correspond to summary levels, with the major summary level in the first row.

Caption

Optional. Enter text to appear above the list display for this property. If you leave this blank, the text (empty) appears as the caption.

NoteIf your application is to support users in multiple locales, choose a noun or noun phrase for the caption of 64 characters or less and select the Localize? check box on the HTML tab. When practical, choose a caption already included in a language pack, to simplify localization. Click the pencil icon Pencil to review or create the field value rule supporting localization. The pencil icon appears only after you select the Localize? check box on the HTML tab. See About the Localization wizard and Rules Inspector tool — Localizing forms and reports with the Field Value Inspector.

Function

Optional. When the property in the Field field has a type of Text or DateTime, you can use a function to transform the property value, to alter the grouping level or sort sequence.

For example, if a property of type Text has hundreds of possible values from AAAAAA to ZZZZZ, you can truncate the value to the first character, to create a report with at most 26 top-level groups. Similarly, values of a DateTime property are precise to the millisecond, but you can group rows by day or month.

For the Text type, click the Details button (Details) to specify a string function that the system applies to the field before grouping. You can select a function that converts the field value to uppercase or lowercase, select a substring, or concatenate the value with another Text property value or with a literal constant.

For DateTime type, click the Details button to specify a portion of the date to be used in grouping. For example, you can specify the year only (in the format YYYY), a two-digit month code (as YYYY-MM or only MM), or the day (as DD or YYYY-MM-DD).

The Details button changes to zzzafter you select a function.

HTML Property

Optional. Select an HTML Property rule to format the label for grouping. Many HTML Property rules accept parameters. Click the magnifying glass icon (zzz) to the right of the HTML Property value to enter parameters for the HTML property rule.

Click the pencil button (pencil) to open the HTML property rule.

Export HTML Property

SmartPromptOptional. If this drill-down display can be exported to Excel, select an HTML Property rule to use for the export. Ordinarily, select one of the following, as appropriate to the type of the value:

Export_Integer Export_Date
Export_Decimal Export_Time
Export_DateTime  

These HTML Property rules accept parameters. Click the magnifying glass icon (zzz) to the right of the Export HTML Property value to enter parameters for the HTML property rule.

Click the pencil button (pencil) to open the HTML property rule.

 zzz Fields

Field

Description

Fields add rowIdentify the properties to summarize.
Function

Select a function such as Count or Average from the selection list.:

  • Count — Counts the number of rows for which this field is not blank.
  • Count Distinct — Counts the number of distinct values of this field.
  • Sum — Adds all instances of this field. Can only be used with Integer, Decimal, and Double property types.
  • Average — Displays the average of this field. Can only be used with Integer, Decimal, and Double property types.
  • Min — Displays the minimum of this field. Can only be used with Integer, Decimal, and Double property types.
  • Max — Displays the maximum of this field. Can only be used with Integer, Decimal, and Double property types.
Field

SmartPrompt Optional. Enter a property in the class corresponding to the Applies To key part of this rule. If the function selected is Average or Sum, identify a property of type Number or Integer.

Leave blank to use a DateTime property with trend reporting.

Trend Reporting

Optional. The system can count instances based on the value of a DateTime property. To define trend fields, leave the Field field blank. Click the details button (Details) and complete the Trend Definition form. See Summary View form — Entering trend details.

Caption

Provide a display caption for that property.

NoteIf your application is to support users in multiple locales, choose a noun or noun phrase for the caption of 64 characters or less and select the Localize? check box on the HTML tab. When practical, choose a caption already included in a language pack, to simplify localization. Click the pencil icon Pencil to review or create the field value rule supporting localization. The pencil icon appears only after you select the Localize? check box on the HTML tab. See About the Localization wizard and Rules Inspector tool — Localizing forms and reports with the Field Value Inspector.

Sort

Select No Sorting, Ascending, or Descending to control the sort order for this field.

Sorting follows the order of rows within this array. If this field is set to Ascending in the first row and also in the second row, values corresponding to the first row form the major sort and values corresponding to the second row form a minor sort.

HTML Property

SmartPromptOptional. To override the presentation of this property defined on the Property form, identify here an HTML Property rule to use when presenting this property.

Many HTML Property rules accept parameters. Click the magnifying glass icon (zzz) to the right of the HTML Property value to enter parameters for the HTML property rule.

Click the pencil button (pencil) to open the HTML property rule.

Export HTML Property

SmartPromptOptional. If this drill-down display can be exported to Excel, select an HTML Property rule to use for the export. Ordinarily, select one of the following, as appropriate to the type of the value:

  • Export_Integer
  • Export_Decimal
  • Export_DateTime
  • Export_Time
  • Export_Date

These HTML Property rules accept parameters. Click the magnifying glass icon (zzz) to the right of the Export HTML Property value to enter parameters for the HTML property rule.

Click the pencil button (pencil) to open the HTML property rule.

 zzz Thresholds

If this summary view rule is to present an interactive chart and you want the chart to include color-coded ranges, define them here.

Field

Description

Define Thresholds Select if you want to define one or colors to identify ranges on an interactive chart (as backgrounds).
Configure... If you selected the Define Thresholds box, click to enter threshold values and colors for each.

Complete these fields on the pop-up window to define colors for each range you want to appear on the interactive chart (if any) and the rows of the report.

Field

Description

Define Thresholds on SmartPromptSelect the Group By property that thresholds are to label.
Background Opacity SmartPromptSelect a value to determine the color intensity, from 10 to 100. High values may make the black text more difficult to read.
  ArrayEnter at least one row, choosing non-overlapping ranges. Order is not significant. If you define two or more ranges, use distinct background colors for each.
Min Value Enter a number that defines the start of a range, exclusive of this value. For example, enter 0 to restrict the range to positive values.
Max Value Enter a number, larger than the Min Value value, that defines the end of a range, inclusive of this value. For example, enter 50 to restrict the range to values less than or equal to 50.
Caption Optional. Enter text to provide a short description of this threshold, such as "0 to 60" or "Good".
Background Color Optional. Enter a six-character hexadecimal value to define the RGB background color for the threshold, such as 0000FF for blue. Choose a background color that allows black text to be legible.
Color Click to access the Windows color-picker control on your workstation. Select a background color.
Border Color Optional. Enter a six-character hexadecimal value to define the RGB color for the threshold borders.
Color Click to access the Windows color-picker control on your workstation. Select a border color.

Click  Apply to save the threshold settings and return to the Summary View form.

 zzz Report Source

Field

Description

Report Source  
Page Name

Enter a clipboard page name to contain the report contents.

Activity Name

SmartPromptOptional. Identify an activity that applies to the Embed-SummaryParams class to support summary calculations. In most cases, accept the default activity named getContent.

AdvancedIf you implement a custom activity for unusual reporting needs, choose a name other than getContent and reference it in this field. The custom activity can derive report contents from various means and sources, such access to external databases through connector rules, calculations, and so on, but must place the results on the page named above and enforce the Maximum Value record count limit. A few summary view capabilities are disabled when an activity with a different name is used here.

See the section Customizing getContent Activities in the Pega Developer Network article PDNPRKB-14593 How to get started on V4.1 reporting for more information on custom activities for this field.

Maximum Value

Optional. Enter a maximum number of instances to retrieve for the report contents in each drill-down and at the summary level. As a best practice during testing, enter 500. If you leave this blank or enter a value above 9,999, the system enforces a limit of 9,999.

Display Count of Records?

Select to include a message at the top of the output display if not all rows that meet the selection criteria are included in the report output. The message is:

Found more than the maximum number of records (nnn)

where nnn is the Maximum Value limit. If all records are displayed, a record count appears.

Displaying nnnn records

Clear to disable this message. This option is enabled by default for new reports you create and disabled for reports created in versions prior to V5.5.

Read Only

Select in most cases to mark the Code-Pega-List page returned by this summary view at runtime as "read-only", meaning that later processing cannot alter the values of properties on the embedded pages. This has multiple benefits: .

  • The report display always matches data exactly as retrieved from the database; it cannot be altered through post-processing.
  • Internal processing reuses certain clipboard pages, reducing database access and improving performance.

If this summary view uses the facilities of the Join tab, this box must be checked.

AdvancedWhen the results page is marked as read-only, later processing can delete embedded pages (for example, with the Page-Remove or Obj-Filter method) but cannot alter the contents of the embedded pages. Any attempt to alter the embedded pages produces an exception, such as:

SQLError - There was a problem getting a list — Illegal 0 length operation

Cannot update — page is read-only

Use alternate database?

Advanced Select to indicate that summary view processing is to use the database identified in the Reports Database field of the Data-Admin-DB-Table instance that supports the Applies To class of this summary view. See How to use a reports database.

Chose this option only if the Reports Database field is not blank and identifies a database table that is replicated from the production PegaRULES database. If the report uses JOIN operations that draw from multiple database tables, all tables must be in the same reports database.

When this option is selected, at runtime the report uses data from the alternate database. It sets property pyUseAlternateDb to true on the top-level output Code-Pega-List page.

Report on Descendant Class Instances

AdvancedSelect to cause this report, at runtime, to use an implementation class derived from the current rule's Applies To class as the source of report contents.

Select this to allow one summary view rule, saved in a framework class, to execute against the work objects in an implementation class. This capability reduces the number of rules needed when building an implementation of a framework.

This check box is effective only if the Applies To class of this summary view rule is derived from the Work- base class.

To determine the Work- class actually used in report execution, use the Tracer tool, or, from the list view display, right-click and select View Source from the browser menu; search for ViewClass.

   

 zzz Sub-Classes

This array appears only when the Applies To key part of the summary view corresponds to a class group.

Field

Description

(n)

Add rowOptional. Identify a work type within the class group. The summary view output may include properties from this class (work type) when they exist. For example, if the class group has three work types, you can report on properties defined in the first type even though these properties do not exist for the other two types.
Note'If this work type is derived from Work-, choose carefully whether you want to join to an implementation class , or in a framework class. At runtime, summary view rules with a framework class in this field automatically report on work objects in the associated implementation class, if the Report on Descendant Class Instance option is selected.

 zzz Security

To successfully execute a summary view rule, a user must hold an access role that provides the ability to execute rules in the Applies To class and to search instances of the Applies To class. Optionally, you can restrict execution of this summary view rule to only those users who hold any one of a list of privileges.

Leave this array blank to impose no additional restrictions. Order in this array is not significant.

Field

Description

Security

Add

Class SmartPromptOptional. Select a class that the system can use to find the Applies To key part of a privilege rule.
Privilege

SmartPromptOptional. Select the Privilege Name key part of a privilege rule.

The system uses the Class and Privilege values with class inheritance to look for the privilege rule.

Web Enabled?

SmartPromptOptional. Select to allow this summary view rule to be executed on a web node, as part of a Pega composite application. If selected, users of a Pega composite application can display this report, if the normal access roles, RuleSet list, and privileges requirements are met.

If not checked and a user at a web node attempts to execute this summary view rule, the rule does not run and a security exception is added to the Alert log.

zzz About Summary View rules