InfoAssist is a powerful report generation tool that enables business users to leverage ad hoc functionality. With InfoAssist, you can generate highly complex reports, charts, and documents from any enterprise information source without IT intervention. You can also analyze multiple reports and charts simultaneously and output report data in a variety of formats.

WebFOCUS Active Technologies reports and dashboards provide business intelligence (BI) for any computer or mobile device running a web browser. Active Technologies present data with a variety of interactive analytic capabilities in a single portable document, deliverable to any type of mobile device. Users of rich interactive applications created with Active Technologies can easily manipulate the data, intuitively explore information, and uncover critical trends and patterns using device-specific user interface characteristics and gestures for multi-touch screens.

With Active Technologies, you can quickly develop completely portable BI applications, deliver interactive reports and dashboards to any user, and reduce the load on the database and server systems by allowing users to work in disconnected mode. The built-in analytics include sorting, filtering, performing data calculations, charting, and much more.

• Filtering an Active Technologies Report on a Dashboard Using Chained Form Controls. You can use the ARFILTER_ONCHANGE = ON property in a compound layout report to filter a target active report or chart on an active dashboard with the values selected in chained active form controls. When the value of the first active form control in a chain changes, the report or chart is filtered with the initial value in the second and subsequent active form controls in the chain.
• Viewing Data as a Chart. When you run an active report on an iPad, you can tap Chart or touch the right arrow for the Chart menu option to display a menu that specifies the default value for the type of chart that will be displayed and the default aggregation (calculation) that will be used to draw the chart. Also listed are the columns that are available for display on the X-axis of the chart (the Group By columns).
• Creating a Heading Area With Controls Using the Dashboard Bar. You can create a heading area for an active dashboard by adding a page layout for the dashboard bar (PAGELAYOUT=DASHBOARDBAR). On the page for the dashboard bar, you can insert Active Technologies form controls, reports, and charts that are always displayed above the dashboard tabs.
• Setting the ALPHA Background Color of an Active Technologies Report. You can set the ALPHA background color of an active report or chart, and each report or chart object on an active dashboard, so that the color is transparent. The ALPHA background color includes the background color of the data in the report or chart, and alternating background colors. This capability enables you to place an image in the background of a report or chart. For example, you can add a watermark behind a report.
• Displaying the Heading in a Rollup Table. When using a rollup table generated from a tabular active report, you can either display the heading that is supplied by Active Technologies or display a custom heading that you supply in the original tabular report procedure.
• Setting the Default Filter Value for a Column on an Active Technologies Dashboard. This feature sets the default filter value in an active form control and at run time automatically applies the filter to the data in the report and chart objects on an active dashboard. It is an optional property for an active form control.
• Hiding a Report Object on an Active Technologies Dashboard. You may need to hide an active report object on an active dashboard. For example, when you want to display non-data related objects in the first tab of the dashboard and place report and chart objects in the subsequent tabs, you can hide the first report object using HIDDEN=ON syntax in your WebFOCUS code. The data from the hidden report is still available for use in the global filter or other filter control.
• Defining Custom Styles for an Active Technologies Report or Dashboard. There are new Active Technologies classes for styling an active report or dashboard:
  • The class .arLoadingMessage defines the font style of the Loading message text for an AHTML report or dashboard.
  • The class .arMobileTabBar defines the background color of the tab area in Active Technologies for mobile web apps.

App Studio is a Windows-based GUI development environment for creating WebFOCUS applications. App Studio provides innovative features and functions that simplify development, thereby allowing you to concentrate on interface design, business logic, and data manipulation. Features include data visualization, color exception reporting, intelligent drilldowns, and the ability to generate HTML pages without writing code.

• Creating Visualizations. Visualizations centralize information by providing different views of data that are pertinent to a particular objective. Visualizations support the use of different types of charts, maps, and grids. They also serve to provide information in real-time, based on changes in underlying data or other components. A visualization can be updated, changed, or revised at any time to account for shifts in data needs. You can create a visualization from the Content node in the Environments Tree panel or Environments Detail panel, by right-clicking a folder, pointing to New, and clicking Visualization.
• Browser Support for Output. The Output Viewer Settings tab on the App Studio Options dialog box enables you to set a specific browser to use for output or to use the App Studio Internal Viewer (default), and to set the navigation options for the output (run in new window, run in same window). The Browser Setup section is populated with a list of browsers that are installed on the App Studio machine. App Studio works with Mozilla Firefox®, Google Chrome™, and Microsoft Internet Explorer® browsers.

WebFOCUS is a complete information control system with comprehensive features for retrieving and analyzing data. It enables you to create reports quickly and easily. It also provides facilities for creating highly complex reports, but its strength lies in the simplicity of the request language.

The Reporting Server Release 8.1 Version 04 includes the following Release 7.7 Version 06 Reporting Language new features:

• Preventing Visual Overflow. At times, the size defined for the USAGE format of a field may be too small to fit the actual data to be displayed. In previous releases, this scenario would cause asterisks (***) to display in the report output in place of the actual value. Situations that cause this scenario include if the display value is larger than the defined display format or if a value is aggregated, the summed value does not fit into the space that was allotted for the column by the USAGE format of the field.
• Dynamically Scaling HTML Report Output. The AUTOFIT parameter can be activated to dynamically scale HTML reports and charts horizontally to fill the entire container (window or frame) within your portal pages and HTML pages.
• Embedded Images in Microsoft Excel (XLSX) Workbooks. The XLSX workbooks can contain embedded images in fixed positions in each of the WebFOCUS report areas including headers, footers, and data cells. Additionally, graphs can be placed on individual worksheets within compound workbooks.
• Ability to Change Default Font Style for FORMAT XLSX. The default and available fonts for each output format are defined in the fontmap.xml file maintained within the Reporting Server. Prior to Release 8.1 Version 03, the definitions for DHTML also covered the Microsoft Office formats (XLSX, PPT, PPTX). As of Release 8.1 Version 03, font definitions for format XLSX can be defined separately, allowing ease in customizing the look and feel of your XLSX workbooks. WebFOCUS uses Arial as the default font. Use this feature to change the default font to match the Microsoft Office standard font, Calibri, or your corporate standard.
• Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation File Format (PPTX). The PPTX file format can contain reports, graphs, and images with WebFOCUS styling features, as well as populate PowerPoint templates containing preset Slide Masters, styling, and other business content.
• Using PowerPoint PPTX Display Format. With PowerPoint (PPTX), Microsoft® introduced enhanced functionality in a new presentation file format. WebFOCUS Release 8.1 introduces the capability to retrieve data from any WebFOCUS supported data source and to generate a PPTX presentation for data analysis and distribution. You can place report output on a specific slide in a PowerPoint template. This enables you to populate existing presentations with preset Slide Masters, styling, and other business content. PowerPoint design templates (POTX) and PowerPoint macro-enabled templates (POTM) are stored on the server and can be distributed automatically with ReportCaster.
• WebFOCUS Client Amper Autoprompt Internal Processing. The performance and security of the WebFOCUS Release 8.1 Amper Autoprompt facility has been improved because the WebFOCUS Client no longer uses XSLT templates to create the JavaScript for the Autoprompt HTML page. As of WebFOCUS Release 8.1, the WebFOCUS Client uses the XML returned by the Reporting Server to create the JavaScript for the Autoprompt HTML page. The autoprompt_top.xslt and autoprompt_top_checked.xslt templates have been converted to the new Release 8.1 implementation.
• Automatically Sizing an HTML HFREEZE Report. An AUTO option has been added to the SCROLLHEIGHT command for use with the HTML HFREEZE reporting feature. The AUTO option automatically sizes the HFREEZE report within the browser page or the frame within the page.
• Rolling Up Calculations on Summary Rows. Using the ROLL. operator in conjunction with another prefix operator on a summary line recalculates the sort break values using the values from summary lines generated for the lower level sort break.
• Simplified Character Functions. New character functions have streamlined parameter lists, similar to those used by SQL functions. In some cases, these simplified functions provide slightly different functionality than previous versions of similar functions. The new simplified character functions are CHAR_LENGTH, DIGITS, LPAD, RPAD, LTRIM, RTRIM, TRIM_, LOWER, UPPER, SUBSTRING, and TOKEN.
• Simplified Date and Date-Time Functions. New date and date-time functions have streamlined parameter lists, similar to those used by SQL functions. In some cases, these simplified functions provide slightly different functionality than previous versions of similar functions. The new simplified character function are DTADD, DTDIFF, DTPART, and DTRUNC.
• CHECKPRIVS Function. Given a General Privilege code as input, the CHECKPRIVS function returns Y or N depending on whether the connected user has been granted that privilege.
• Adding a Value Test to RESTRICT=NOPRINT. This extension to RESTRICT=NOPRINT enables you to use a VALUE=expression clause in the RESTRICT command. The expression will be evaluated, and the value will display only if the expression evaluates to true for that value. Any value for which the expression evaluates to false will be replaced on the output by one of the default values.
• Using ACCEPT=SYNONYM in a Master File. ACCEPT=SYNONYM is used to look up values in another data source and retrieve a corresponding display value. The lookup field values must exist in both data sources, although they do not need to have matching field names.
• Using Multiple Prefix Operators on the Same Measure in SUBTOTAL. You can now reference a field with multiple prefix operators in a summary command using the prefix operator to differentiate between the fields with multiple operators.
• Validating Parameter Values Without Data File Access: REGEX. Parameter value validation processing has been enhanced to validate the parameter value without accessing the data using the REGEX mask, which specifies a regular expression.
• Adding DBA Restrictions to the Join Condition. When DBA restrictions are applied to a request on a multi-segment structure, by default the restrictions are added as WHERE conditions in the report request. When the DBAJOIN parameter is set ON, DBA restrictions are treated as internal to the file or segment for which they are specified, and are added to the join syntax.
• Storing Localized Metadata in Language Files. If you want to centralize localized column titles, descriptions, and prompts, and apply them to multiple Master Files, you can create a set of translation files and use the TRANS_FILE attribute in a Master File to invoke them.