Column divider image
“Data Driven” means that the selection of products or customers in Prophecy reports is driven by data, either from your Prophecy database itself or, in fact, from any other database. Here is a list of ideas for possible data-driven selections:
Idea 1 is a far more elegant solution to the “Show me only the products listed in my customer” than any existing option!

How a user would use this feature

There is a new button on the Product and Customer Selector dialog boxes - “Specials”: This opens a new dialog box with the available special selection scripts. When you select one of these scripts and click ‘Go’ the SQL query in the background is expanded and run. The list of codes it returns will be automatically pasted into the selector dialog as if you’d selected them yourself by hand. Remember, this feature can query any database. As long as the query executes reasonably quickly and returns a list of product or customer code it can be used for this purpose.
'Specials' button screenshot

How does it work?

A ‘Special’ data driven selection script comprises just two elements: An ODBC database connection string to connect Prophecy to the database containing the data to be queried. The SQL of the query that will be run when the ‘Special’ is selected by the user. Special expansion variables can be used in the SQL which are expanded each time at run time, just before the SQL is executed. For example, you would use the variable {Cust ome rSelection} when you are returning all the products bought by the currently selected customer. The SQL would then expand from ..IN( {CustomerSelection} )... to IN(’cust001’,’cust052’ <etc> to reflect the ‘live’ Prophecy customer selection. The good news is that from a user viewpoint you don’t need to know this! You just read the short and long description in the dialog box pictured here! One more thing to notice about the dialog box listing the available ‘Specials’. Look at the panel labelled ‘Options’. For selection scripts which depend on what’s selected on the ‘other’ dimension (customers when you’re in the product selector or vice versa on the customer selector) you can get Prophecy to automatically re-run the special selection script. For example, say you have a product selection script which selects all the products with forecasts for the currently selected customers in your report. What this feature does is re-run the product selection logic each time you use the Customer    selector to select a different customer. The product selection is therefore tied dynamically to the customer selection!
Special selection scripts dialog image from Prophecy

Data Driven Product and Customer Selections are coming in this

month’s release of Prophecy!

Placeholder image Prophecy News! Data Perceptions PROPHECY September 2014 edition News Update from Go to Page 2 .. News Update email: peter@dataperceptions.co.uk web:   http://www.dataperceptions.co.uk 	1.	Select all base level products with forecasts and/or history (i.e. exclude zero items). 	2.	Select all products with a forecast volume but no forecast price. 	3.	Select all customers where forecast year end total is above / below Budget by x% 	4.	Select all products where forecast gross margin is less than x% 	5.	Select products where stock weeks < 3 weeks. 	6.	Select products where forecast versus actual > x%
“Data Driven” means that the selection of products or customers in Prophecy reports is driven by data, either from your Prophecy database itself or, in fact, from any other database. Here is a list of ideas for possible data-driven selections:
Idea 1 is a far more elegant solution to the “Show me only the products listed in my customer” than any existing option!

How a user would use this feature

There is a new button on the Product and Customer Selector dialog boxes - “Specials”: This opens a new dialog box with the available special selection scripts. When you select one of these scripts and click ‘Go’ the SQL query in the background is expanded and run. The list of codes it returns will be automatically pasted into the selector dialog as if you’d selected them yourself by hand. Remember, this feature can query any database. As long as the query executes reasonably quickly and returns a list of product or customer code it can be used for this purpose.

How does it work?

A ‘Special’ data driven selection script comprises just two elements: An ODBC database connection string to connect Prophecy to the database containing the data to be queried. The SQL of the query that will be run when the ‘Special’ is selected by the user.
Specials button image in Prophecy
Special expansion variables can be used in the SQL which are expanded each time at run time, just before the SQL is executed. For example, you would use the variable {Cust ome rSelection} when you are returning all the products bought by the currently selected customer. The SQL would then expand from ..IN( {CustomerSelection} )... to IN(’cust001’,’cust052’ <etc> to reflect the ‘live’ Prophecy customer selection. The good news is that from a user viewpoint you don’t need to know this! You just read the short and long description in the dialog box pictured here! One more thing to notice about the dialog box listing the available ‘Specials’. Look at the panel labelled ‘Options’. For selection scripts which depend on what’s selected on the ‘other’ dimension (customers when you’re in the product selector or vice versa on the customer selector) you can get Prophecy to automatically re-run the special selection script. For example, say you have a product selection script which selects all the products with forecasts for the currently selected customers in your report. What this feature does is re-run the product selection logic each time you use the Customer   selector to select a different customer. The product selection is therefore tied dynamically to the customer selection!
Selection scripts dialog box from Prophecy

Data Driven Product and Customer Selections are

coming in this month’s release of Prophecy!

Placeholder image Banner - Prophecy News Update, Sept 2014 Go to Page 2 .. News Update email: peter@dataperceptions.co.uk web:   http://www.dataperceptions.co.uk 	1.	Select all base level products with forecasts and/or history (i.e. exclude zero items). 	2.	Select all products with a forecast volume but no forecast price. 	3.	Select all customers where forecast year end total is above / below Budget by x% 	4.	Select all products where forecast gross margin is less than x% 	5.	Select products where stock weeks < 3 weeks. 	6.	Select products where forecast versus actual > x%