Creating a report with on-the-fly filtering

Sometimes you may have a report that you'd like to generate for different sets of elements in your project without rewriting the custom report. Report parameters make this pretty easy to do. The article at http://casecomplete.zendesk.com/entries/20047751-passing-parameter-values-to-reports can get you started with report parameters so that you are prompted for values when you generate the report.

Here's a simple example, below. This report will prompt for the name of the release for which use cases are reported:

$info

                $description “use a parameter to specify what to report on”

                $param $$WhichRelease

$endinfo

$repeatUseCases where Release = $$WhichRelease

$Name ($ID)

$endrepeatUseCases

The only problem with this report is that if you want to show use cases for any release, there's no way to specify that. The fix, though, is simple. The report below uses $IF statements in the report to conditionally determine whether to apply filtering to the report, or to report on everything based on whether the parameter value contains something or is empty, respectively. Each $IF section is tested, and is included in the report if the criteria is true. Otherwise, it's ignored. Here's the report template:

$info

                $description “use a parameter to specify what to report on”

                $param $$WhichRelease

$endinfo

$if $$WhichRelease <> ‘’

$repeatUseCases where Release = $$WhichRelease

$endif

$if $$WhichRelease = ‘’

$repeatUseCases

$endif

$Name ($ID)

$endrepeatUseCases