HTML Tag Attribute forms display on MSTR Web “Flash” Dashboard/Zak

When defining HTML link tags using an ApplySimple on an attribute element, we cannot use the same syntax for different versions of MicroStrategy Web.

When we define an attribute element with an ApplySimple to output a link HTML tag such as <a href=’xxx’ base target=’_blank’> works only if you view dashboard in wed prior to versions of MicroStrategy 8.1.2 hot fix 4

Here we really need to understand how flash renders HTML links. MicroStrategy SQL engine issues a SQL statement to the Data Warehouse, the returned values from the Data Warehouse are formatted with the HTML link tags on them. The HTML link tags are then passed on to the MicroStrategy DashboardViewer.swf for rendering. In MicroStrategy we have some Flex code which performs some transformations to the HTML in order to avoid limitations on Adobe’s html parser. After MicroStrategy 8.1.2 hotfix4, flex code was not able to perform the required transformations on HTML parser, so they decided to remove the much needed transformations and depend purely and Adobe’s parser. You can find the link below to get better understanding of Adobe’s parser code

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/langref/flash/text/TextField.html#htmlText

If you don’t follow the proper syntax mentioned in the above link, we can not get the Tag attributes forms displayed in Flash.

Ex: We create a new attribute form on Vendor

If we need drilling in a dashboard using attribute form we follow the below code which opens the report  in new tab

ApplySimple( “‘<A base Target = ”_blank” HREF=””http://Webserver/asp/Main.aspxServer=IServer&
Project=Projectname&Port=0&evt=2048001&src=Main.aspx.2048001&
documentID=”DocumentID” (Document ID you want to drill) &valuePromptAnswers=’||#0||'””>’||#1||'</A>'”, [VENDOR_ID], [VENDOR_NM])

Character fields in the value prompt answers changes slightly from DB to DB.
Using this code we can able to show the hyperlink in Flash dashboards prior to MicroStrategy version 8.1.2 hotfit4 in Web.
Versions after MicroStrategy 8.1.2 hotfix4 need to follow the code mentioned below

ApplySimple(“‘<a href= ”http:// Webserver/asp/Main.aspx?Server= IServer&Project=Projectname&Port=0&evt=2048001&src=Main.aspx.2048001&
documentID==”DocumentID” (where you want to drill)&valuePromptAnswers=’||#0||”’ target=”_blank”>’ || #1 || ‘</a>'”, [VENDOR_ID], [VENDOR_NM])

 Note: If you want to drill to a report instead of document in MicroStrategy dashboard you should name it as reportID instead of documentID in ApplySimple

 Reference: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=textcontrols_04.html