General preferences

The General preferences page lets you personalize your MicroStrategy Web settings, including the language in which reports are displayed and whether or not to display save options that let you save a report as static or prompted.

Select Preferences from the menu at the top of MicroStrategy Web, then click General. The following options are available:

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• Default start page: Select a page to be displayed by default when you log in the MicroStrategy Web. Options include Home, Summary, History List, My Subscriptions, My Reports, Shared Reports, Create Report, and Create Document. You can also choose to start with the Last Folder or Last Report visited, if you have previously viewed a folder or report.

• Color Theme: Select a color scheme from the drop-down list. Click Show Theme Preview to see how the color scheme will look in MicroStrategy Web.

• Language: Specify the language in which to display MicroStrategy Web pages.

• Click Show advanced options to set languages for the following:

• Metadata: Select the language in which the report object names, for example the row and column names, should be displayed.

• Data: Select the language in which report results should be displayed. This is the data that comes from your organization’s data storage.

• Number and Date Format: Specify the language in which numbers and dates are displayed. This setting, along with the Time Zone setting, ensures that object creation/modification dates and times are converted to your local time if the project information is in another time zone.
  
  Note: The Number and Date Format and Time Zone settings do not affect the report execution dates and times shown in the History List.

• Intelligence Server: Specify the language in which all messages from the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, such as error messages and warning messages, are displayed.

• Measurement Units: Specify the unit of measurement that Web should use for horizontal and vertical rulers, the alignment grid, and the measurement and positioning of objects in a report or document.

• Time Zone: Specify the time zone in which you work. The default setting is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

• Dynamic HTML (called DHTML): Enable or disable DHTML optimization in your browser for MicroStrategy Web. (DHTML optimization features are described in the list below.) The default setting is Determine automatically, which means that DHTML optimization is automatically enabled if your browser supports the technology. Select No to use HTML only.
  
  DHTML optimization allows you to access the following features (some of the following actions require certain privileges):

• Creating Report Services documents

• Automatically submitting option selections in drop-down menus as soon as they are selected, rather than requiring you to select the option and then click OK or Apply

• Moving, copying, or renaming reports, documents, folders, or other objects while browsing through folder pages

• Dragging and dropping objects on or off a grid report

• Right-clicking objects in reports or folders to have quick access to formatting and other functionality

• Enabling outline mode in grid reports, which lets you group data, making longer reports easier to analyze

• Locking a grid report’s column and row headings, so that when you scroll through a large report, the column and row headings remain visible

• Adding shortcut metrics, such as percent-to-total or rank metrics, to a grid report

• Moving dialog boxes, such as the Report Properties dialog box. If DHTML is disabled, dialog boxes are displayed as panels that cannot be repositioned.

• Display documents in Express Mode

• Accessibility Mode: If you use software that audibly reads what is displayed on the monitor, select the Enable screen reader compatibility check box. Enabling this check box also enables a screen reader-compatible version of this help. If you select this check box and view a document in Express Mode, you can view the results of a document as you might in a static PDF file. This check box is cleared by default.

• Drop down menus: Select or clear the Require mouse click to open menus check box to determine whether to require a mouse click to open menus. If the check box is cleared, menus open when a user places the cursor over them. This is only applicable when DHTML is enabled. (See Dynamic HTML above.)

• Font style: Specify options for the fonts or typefaces that are applied to the interface and reports.
  
  Note: If you are using a double-byte (Asian) character set in the interface, be sure to select a font type that suits your language display.

• Fonts: Determine whether to use the default font settings or select specific fonts for use in Web. Select Custom to specify fonts. Once you select a font in the Available column, click the right arrow to move it to the Selected column. You can then select a font and click the up or down arrows to order them in the priority to use on reports. The default fonts are Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, and Microsoft Sans Serif.

• Font size: Determine whether to use the default font settings or select a custom font size. To specify a custom font size, select Custom, then type a number in the field. The default is 8.

• Output Formats: Set printing and exporting options, as follows:

• Use PDF for printing reports: Select this check box to enable PDF printing, which allows you to adjust your document or report through a PDF preview before printing it. PDF printing allows you to specify print options without having to adjust your browser's print settings. This check box is cleared by default.

• Re-use new window for each export, print, PDF action: Clear this check box (default) to open a new window every time you click the PDF, Print, or Export buttons. Select this check box to reuse a PDF, Export, or Print window whenever one of these types of windows is already open in Web.

• Full Screen Mode Behavior for Reports: Specify whether reports are displayed in Full Screen mode. When you view a document in Full Screen mode, all of the menus, toolbars, and panels are hidden from view except the Standard toolbar and the Page-by field. This allows you to focus attention on the data itself and maximize the amount of the document that can be shown at one time. The options are:

• Read from Report (default): Reports are displayed in Full Screen mode only if the report's Full Screen Mode setting is enabled.
  
  This setting is the Always open this report in full screen mode check box in the Grid Options dialog box/panel.

• Open every Report in Full Screen mode: All reports in the current project are displayed in Full Screen Mode, by default.

• Don't open any Report in Full Screen mode: No reports in the current project are displayed in Full Screen Mode.

• Full Screen Mode Behavior for Documents:

• Read from Document (default): Documents are displayed in Full Screen Mode only if the document's Full Screen mode setting is enabled.
  
  This setting is the Always open this document in full screen mode check box in the Properties and Formatting dialog box.

• Open every Document in Full Screen mode: All documents in the current project are displayed in Full Screen Mode, by default.

• Don't open any Document in Full Screen mode: No documents in the current project are displayed in Full Screen Mode.

• Cart-style selections: Determine whether items in cart-style prompts or in the Report Filter and View Filter editors remain in the Available list even after you add them to the Selected list. Select the Keep item in list of available answers when making selections in cart-style prompts or filter editors check box to ensure that items you select are not removed from the Available list when you move them to the Selected list. This check box is cleared by default.

• Qualification: A qualification is a condition that must be met for data to be included on a report. For example, "Region = Northeast" or "Revenue > $1 million". You can create multiple qualifications for a single filter or custom group, and then specify how to combine the qualifications using the logical operators AND, AND NOT, OR, and OR NOT. You can specify the following options for qualifications:

• Default Operators for Metric Qualification: Determine the default operator (such as Greater Than or Equals) that is displayed in a report filter, view filter, or prompt when you create a metric qualification. When you build a metric qualification in a filter or prompt, the operator specified here is displayed by default if it is compatible with the data type of the metric.

• Default Operators for Attribute Qualification: Determine the default operator (such as Greater Than or Equals) that is displayed in a report filter, view filter, or prompt when you create an attribute qualification. When you build an attribute qualification in a filter or prompt, the operator specified here is displayed by default if it is compatible with the attribute form.

• Preserve white space in prompt answers and filter expressions: Determines whether or not to keep the white space in prompt answers and filter details when you create a metric or attribute qualification. This check box is cleared by default.

• Hierarchy browsing: Specify what levels of detail are displayed when you browse hierarchies of attributes. A hierarchy is a group of attributes that are related through some business concept. For example, a Time hierarchy might contain the attributes Year, Month, and Day. Hierarchies are used to group these related objects so you can find related objects easily and view them together when selecting objects.

• Expand Attributes automatically when there is only one browsing option: Select this option to allow attributes with only one browsing option to be expanded automatically. This check box is selected by default.

• Save Options:

• Display advanced options: Determine whether or not to display the advanced save options, which allow you to choose whether to save reports as static or prompted. If you save a report as prompted, you will be re-prompted the next time you run the report. If you save it as static, your original prompt answers are saved and used as the default answers the next time you run the report. For more information about saving reports, see Saving Reports.

From the drop-down list at the bottom of the page, select to apply the changes to the current project or all projects you have access to that are stored on the Intelligence Server and then click Apply.

Warning: Clicking Load Default Values will reset all of your preferences settings.