Report Object Menus that are Missing Some Expected Options - Support and Troubleshooting

Report Object Menus that are Missing Some Expected Options Description  Overview It is sometimes reported that a user will open a report which they normally have permission to access and edit will be missing various options which are expected to be associated to that report (such as the Save option for that report).

There are a variety of causes as to why the Save menu in a report may be missing certain options, such as ACL permissions, modifications to UI Actions and others. However this article will discuss one of the most common causes that expected Menu selections may not be found.

Symptoms Accessing the Save button on the edit report form will usually, if the logged in user has write access to the report, show a number of selectable options. The specific options found will be directly dependent on if the classic Report Builder interface is being used or the newer Report Designer is used.

For the classic Report Builder Interface, for a user who has full access to a specific report, the following options might commonly be found within the Save menu: Update, Insert, Insert and Stay, Publish, Delete, Schedule, Add to Dashboard, Sharing, Export settings, Export to PDF, Report drilldown, Save as report source, Report history, and Multiple dataset.

While, in the newer Report Designer Interface, the following options should generally be available from the Save menu for users who would normally have full editing access to this report: Update, Insert, Insert and Stay, and Save as data source.

It should be noted that the new Report Designer Interface has moved some of the options that were originally found in the Save menu to the new Sharing menu which was introduced in the Report Designer Interface. Thus, in the normal case, a user of the Report Designer who has edit rights to that report should have the following options shown in the Sharing menu: Share, Schedule, Add to Dashboard, Export to PDF and Publish (or Unpublish for an already published report).

However, the user may unexpectedly find that certain options are missing from these menus. For instance, in the Report Builder Interface the Save menu options which might be found are the following: Insert, Insert and Stay, Schedule, Add to Dashboard, Export to PDF, and Report history.

And, from the new Report Builder Interface, the following options might appear (with several options missing): Insert, Insert and Stay, and Save as data source.

In the new Report Designer Interface, some of the options originally found in the Save Menu have been moved to the Sharing menu. However, the options that one might expect to find in this menu may also not be appearing as expected. The reduced options that might be instead found in this menu are: Schedule, Add to Dashboard, and Export to PDF.

Thus, the question may arise as to why certain Save menu options might be missing for some reports in which the user should have the exact same permissions.

Cause and Solution As mentioned above, there are multiple potential reasons for these menus to be missing options, which could include permissions, modifications to the UI Actions found within this menu as well as several other specific reasons. However, the most common cause of this issue is that the report is in a different scope as the current user session. Thus, if currently in a different session scope than the report itself, no options will be found that will allow editing of that specific report from a different scope. If the Insert or Insert and Stay option is selected from within a different application scope, a new copy of that report would be created. The scope of this new report would be that of the scope for which the user is currently associated to.

To ensure that these necessary options will appear as expected, and that any changes to the report will will apply to the correct scope, you will want to ensure you are in the same scope as is the report you intend to edit when opening that report.

Alternately, the here link found in the informational message at the top of the display, which usually appears within a message indicating the currently selected record is in a different scope as the user session, can be clicked to temporarily change to the same scope as the record is in to allow editing of that report which will provide access to the previously missing menu options from the Save and other menus.