Did you know that apart from being able to run reports out to Excel, Sage Intelligence allows you to switch output modes which can be useful when designing and debugging reports? Two additional options are provided, output to Screen and output to SQL.
Output to Screen does away with rendering a report to Excel and instead, outputs the data to a dialogue window. This is useful if you would like a quick way to view the data that is output for a report. Output to SQL also does away with rendering to Excel and displays the full SQL query that is executed for a report in a dialogue window. This is useful if you would like to view the SQL query in case you are receiving errors while running a report or would like to modify the query.
To switch the output mode, do the following:
1. In the Report Manager, right click on the Home object and select “Switch Output Mode” from the menu that appears.
2. From the dialogue that appears select the option you want to use and click OK.
3. Now when you run out a report, it will be output based on the option you selected.
The following image is an example of a Sales report run out to Screen mode. Take note that from this dialogue, you can export the data to Excel. This is different to running your report out to Excel.
The following image is an example of the same report run out to SQL. From here you can test it to see that it executes successfully against your database, and you can continue in which case the data will be displayed in the same output screen as above. Take note that you can’t edit the SQL in this view. If you want to be able to make changes to the query, you will need to do so in the Sage Intelligence Connector module.
