If you aren’t paying close attention to the messages in Web Report Studio, you may run into some puzzling issues.  The messages that SAS produces may not be obvious enough if you are expecting a different behavior, thus making troubleshooting a bit difficult.

Gotcha 1: Why Won’t My Changes Save?

This reminder comes from Shri Sastry.  She had asked a co-worker to make a simple change to a Web Report Studio and she  noticed the change still was not made days later.  Shri inquired and the co-worker told her she had made the change several times but the application would not save the changes. This sounded odd and frustrating! She observed the change being made and this is how the Gotcha was discovered! When using an application like MS Excel or MS Word, when you exit the application a sanity check window appears asking if you want to keep the changes.  However, the Web Report Studio sanity check explains you are discarding the changes.  So – read closely or fail victim to the GOTCHA!

To save the changes to the report, use the File > Save menu choice or click the Save icon.

Gotcha 2: Why Can’t I Create or Remove a Rank? 

This gotcha comes from Brent Whitesel, who supports a SAS BI team for his company.  Recently a user complained that he could not edit an existing rank to a report object.  Upon opening the report, Brent found the cause.  Here’s some background first – the way the permissions are setup for this report, you must have permission to see the sensitive data, thus if the user does not have the proper permission, then only the Edit mode is available.

However, notice what the window says when you attempt to create a rank rule in Edit mode – it reminds you that it can only create a rank when in View mode.  You cannot do it from Edit mode!

See – when you are in View mode you can easily create a filter or rank!  However, you may also need permissions to do so based on how your SAS Administrator has the site setup.

Do you know of any gotchas?

Tell me about any SAS BI gotchas you have encountered in the Comments section below.  I might just create an example based on your comments!

Tags: Troubleshooting, Web Report Studio