What are Column Prompts?

A column prompt is the most common and flexible prompt type. A column prompt enables you to build very specific value prompts to either stand alone on the dashboard or analysis or to expand or refine existing dashboard and analysis filters. Column prompts can be created for hierarchical, measure, or attribute columns at the analysis or dashboard level.

You can create intelligent prompts that are specialized for the user's business needs and roles so that the user can quickly and accurately find the appropriate data that is needed to make a key business decision.

Oracle BI Enterprise Edition also enables you, as the content designer, to create currency prompts, image prompts, and variable prompts. For more information about these types of prompts, see "Other Prompt Types."

How Do Column Prompts and Selection Steps Interact?

Selection steps allow the user to provide or refine the data from attribute columns and measures columns and to provide a kind of filter for hierarchical columns. Note that selection steps are applied after data aggregation. When you create selection steps for a column, you have the option of overriding one step of the selection with a dashboard or analysis column prompt. All selection steps before and after the override step are processed as specified, and the override step is processed using the user-specified data values that are collected by the column prompt. Column prompts that are created for hierarchical columns allow you to include only the Choice List input option.

For more information about selection steps, see "What are Filters and Selection Steps?" and "Working with Selections of Data." For more information about creating a prompt that works with selections, see "Overriding a Selection Step With a Column Prompt."