Creating a report that contains HTML links is actually quite easy. You can even “parameterize” the HTML link to include values from other columns on a row by row basis. For example, if you have a Brand column, and wish to create a column containing a URL which will redirect the user to a Google search using the Brand value as the keyword, here are the steps to implementing this column in an OBIEE report:
- Create a report, and add any column (as a “placeholder”)
- Choose the Edit Formula for the placeholder column
- Enter in HTML using OBIEE syntax, such as this:
‘<a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=’ || Products.Brand || ‘&btnG=Google+Search”>’ || Products.Brand || ‘</a>’
- The single quotes signify a string
- The pipes || act a string operator to concatenate HTML with an actual OBIEE column (of the syntax Table.Column
- NOTE: we’ve added the target =”_blank” tag to open the URL in a new browser window
- NOTE: if the column values contain spaces, you may need to enclose the column in a REPLACE function to replace spaces with %20, which represents a space in a URL.
- Once you are finished editing the formula click OK and then go to the Column Properties > Data Format tab. Override the Default Data Format and select HTML for Treat Text As
