The output of the previous recipe brings the right information back to the screen. It filters the rows correctly and shows highest selling product per product line for selected shipment month.
For better representation and to highlight the best selling product lines, we need to sort the product lines in descending order of quantity.
- Open the report in Cognos Report Studio.
- Select the Quantity column.
- Click on the Sort button from toolbar and choose Sort Descending.
- Run the report to check if sorting is working. You will notice that sorting is not working.
- Now go back to Report Studio, select Quantity, and click the Sort button again. This time choose Advanced Sorting.
- Expand the tree for Product line. Drag Quantity from Detail Sort List to Sort List under Product line.
- Click the OK button and test the report. This time the rows are sorted in descending order of Quantity as required.
The Sort option by default works at the detailed level. This means the non-grouped items are sorted by the specified criteria within their own groups.
Here we want to sort the product lines which are grouped (not detailed items). In order to sort the Groups, we need to define the advanced sorting option as shown in this recipe.
You can define it so for the whole list report from the Advanced Sorting dialog box. You can use different items and ordering for different groups and details.
You can also choose to sort certain groups by the data items that are not shown in the report. You need only bring those items from Source (model) to the Query, and you will be able to pick it in the sorting dialog.