Bex Fundamentals - Key Concepts

Fields marked with an asterisk (*) in the report selection screen must be populated in order for the report to run. Occassionally, these fields are prepopulated with a default value on behalf of the user. In other cases, the user must populate this field with the appropriate selection.

The Bex Analysis toolbar is how users can access and run reports. The Bex Design Toolbar contains advanced features of report presentation.

If you have applied an unintended change to the report results, simply right click in the report results area and slect Back One Navigation Step. This will undo the previous action. If you wish to go back to the initial report results, simply right click in the report results area and select Back to Start.

True, the History button contains a list of reports the user has recently accessed. This feature provides a quick access to frequently used reports, rather than going through the main menu and clicking into the appropriate folder path to launch the report.

Creating and Saving a BW Favorite allows users to save the preferred layout and filters as a user-specific report. This report is accessible through the Favorites button in the Bex main menu. Users are encouraged to save favorites to reduce time spent applying display and filter preferences in the report layout each time the report is run.

Saved variants allow users to populate frequently used report selections one time and save those selections as a "saved variant". This reduces the amount of time spent keying the same information (for example, a range of profit centers) several times if the user runs the same report multiple times a month or a quarter.

The Roles button allows the user to navigate to the main menu of folders containing reports by SBU, functional area, or department. The Find button allows users to search for a specific report using key words. The History button shows a list of recently run reports for the user. The Favorites button contains a list of reports saved by the user with preferred layouts.

The Bex Design Toolbar contains advanced features of report presentation, such as lists of active filters, conditions, and exceptions defined in the query, as well as access to all available characteristics and structures for further analysis.

Properties allow the user to select display preferences for a specific field displayed in the report results. To access properties, simply right click in the results area and select "properties" from the context menu. You can choose to display results as key (numeric value) or text (alpha value), or set rounding and decimal place display options.

To filter report results, the user can right click in the results area and slect "filter by" from the context menu and select the desired filter to apply. Advanced filtering options are available from the query properties menu.

To save a report as a favorite, click on the Save icon in the Bex Analysis toolbar, and choose "save workbook as".

Query properties contains many presentation and display options that apply to the entire report. To access Query properties, simply right click in the results area and select "query properties" from the context menu.

To choose sort options, right click in the results area and select "Sort by..." from the context menu. Options include Sort Ascending or Descending, and by Key (numeric value, such as GL Account) or by Text (alpha value, such as GL Description).