Allow formatting of reports at data view level rather than creating entities

Navan Mehra

Hi All,
I have submitted this idea in the Idea lab and would request you all vote for it if you consider it worthy.

In my opinion, there should be a way to manage the formatting of how we would like to display or format our data on the data view, at the data view level rather than creating multiple entities at the data model level. For example, consider a P&L report which has different sections and it has all labels and empty rows between data rows. At present,  we need to create an entity with all such empty rows and labels and format them. Consider the same P&L having detail and summary versions or even more. All we end up is with a bunch of entities that were created just to cater to specific formatting needs. 

This is even more relevant with unbalanced hierarchies where members arrange themselves in a parent-child tree structure and we end up with empty rows and labels outside the tree. The data model should not be polluted with the creation of multiple entities to cater to formatting. An ability to manage format and how we present underlying data should be managed at the presentation layer and not at the data model level.

Please vote the idea here  - https://community.board.com/contribute/ideation-home/viewidea?IdeationKey=6400ff80-5ec8-4ca9-b88e-415f64f148cf

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Navan Mehra
Senior Consultant
Board Community
Australia
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Dominik Borchert

Hey Navan, 

I can also see your point here.

What we need is the possibility to create specific (or static) row structures without adding new entities into the data model. At the moment we create a new reporting  lines (as a new entity) within our data flows for every new requirement. Then we apply the formatting to these rows via the data model and select the relevant rows for each screen.

It would be great to solve this directly in the data view without touching the data model. 

In our case / company colleagues are also using an additional reporting tool, where they can define row structures (a row can be defined as selection or just a formula using other rows of this structure) within the query definiton. Against this tool board is then always compared... Regardless of this, board has many other advantages, but it is always a discussion point since the users are not able to create own data flows here...

I had also tried to raise an idea in this context:

https://community.board.com/contribute/ideation-home/viewidea?IdeationKey=97f445d9-4c99-4b90-9150-0633d991ade6&tab=groupdetails

Best regards, dominik

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Dominik Borchert
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