Report HTML Formatting

As a web-based BI tool, SeekTable allows you to use custom HTML within table cells, providing flexibility beyond standard cell properties like background/text color and font styles. This HTML formatting works for report's web view, PDF and HTML exports (including reports inlined in emails) + cell properties affect Excel export too.

There are 2 ways how conditional / HTML formatting can be configured:

• Use format expressions in the dimension's/measure's Format. An expression can be specified using the following format syntax:

  =(expression)

  Note that expressions should always be wrapped in brackets. The expression syntax is the same as for calculated cube members; however, local variables are not supported. The only variable that can be used is value which refers to the cell's value.
  Also a format expression can return runtime-evaluated Format specifier, for example: =(value==0 ? "-" : "{0:0.00}"). In this case, the conditional format specifier will carry over to Excel exports.
• Use calculated cube members (Type=Expression) for the same purpose. In these formulas you can use multiple arguments (measures), report parameters and pivot table context functions PivotTable.*.

In both cases you can use special HTML-related functions to apply custom HTML and/or conditional formatting rules:

• Html.Link to render a link (<a> tag). This function affects cells in Excel exports too!
• Html.SetTextColor to set the color of the text (applied to cell's tag TH/TD). This function affects cells in Excel exports!
• Html.SetBackgroundColor to set background color of the text (applied to cell's tag TH/TD). This function affects cells in Excel exports!
• Html.SetBold and Html.SetItalic to set a font style of the text. This function affects cells in Excel exports!
• Html.Raw allows you to render any custom HTML code inside the table cell. With 2nd argument it is possible to specify a non-HTML value for non-HTML exports (CSV, Excel, JSON).
  Note: some tags are not allowed, like <script>, <iframe>, <link>, <meta>.

Conditional formatting in tables

You can customize cells style (color/background color, bold/italics, font size etc) based on cell values. The following expression highlights with red measure values that below some threshold:

Variant 1: format expression

=(value<200 ? Html.SetTextColor("{0:#.##}", "#FF0000") : value))

Variant 2: calculated dimension

1. Let's assume that Name of the measure you want to format is SumOfTotal
2. Go to Edit Cube Configuration and add a new calculated measure:
   • Set Type = Expression
   • In Parameters click + Value and set an expression:

     Html.SetTextColor( Html.Raw( Format("{0:#.##}", [SumOfTotal] ), SumOfTotal),  SumOfTotal<200 ? "red" : null)

     In a similar way, if you don't want ' want to have colors in the Excel export too:

     SumOfTotal<200 ? Html.Raw( "<span style='color:red;'>"+Html.HtmlEncode(SumOfTotal)+"</span>", SumOfTotal) : SumOfTotal

     Then add one more parameter to declare the name of measure that is used in the expression:

     SumOfTotal

   • Set Name = SumOfTotalFormatted
3. Create a report and use SumOfTotalFormatted measure for Values. See here how it looks in the demo report.

Links and custom navigation

You can use HTML formatting for links rendering:

1. Let's assume that the cube has company_name and company_website_url dimensions
2. Go to Edit Cube Configuration and add new calculated dimension:
   • Set Type = Expression
   • Set Name = company_name_linked
   • In Parameters click + Value and set an expression:

     Html.Link(company_website_url, company_name, true)

     Then add the following values to declare dimension names used in the expression:

     company_name

     company_website_url

3. Create a report and use company_name_linked dimension

In a similar way you can render <img> tag and display images in the table cells or create a link another report.