For simple report-only dashboards, using a simple Properties worksheet in Excel is sufficient to provide all the necessary information for parameters, reports, and their data destinations.
Normally, such a Properties worksheet contains two sections, one for all parameters and one for reports.
Specifying Report Parameters
In the first section of the Properties worksheet, list the report parameters. For each parameter that you want the system to prompt for a value at runtime, you can specify the name, the label, the data type, and where the value must be placed in the dashboard.
The only mandatory property is the name, and it must be set first. All other properties are optional. If the label property is not specified, the name will be used as the default label. The valid data types are listed below and the default data type is String.
By default, the value of the parameter will not be shown in the dashboard.
String
Number
Date
Timestamp
Entity
Control
Subcontrol
Program
Vulnerability
Ticket
DynamicGroup
Here is an example for date type parameter:
parameter1.name = reportDate
parameter1.label = Report Date
parameter1.type = Date
parameter1.value.target = Dashboard!$D$2
Specifying Reports
In the second section of the Properties worksheet, list the reports. For each report, specify the fully-qualified name and the data destination.
The data destinations are specified in the Excel format as follows:
1. A single cell:
SheetName!$ColumnName$RowNumber
2. A single row:
SheetName!$StartColumnName$RowNumber:$EndColumnName$RowNumber
3. A single unbounded column:
SheetName!$ColumnName
4. A single bounded column:
SheetName!$ColumnName$StartRowNumber:$ColumnName$EndRowNumber
5. An unbounded range:
SheetName!$StartColumnName:$EndColumnName
6. A bounded range:
SheetName!$StartColumnName$StartRowNumber:$EndColumnName$EndRowNumber
