Cascading User Reports is a feature which allows multiple prerequisite reports to cascade into a final report. This is a powerful tool that allows report information to flow from one report into another and can simplify certain reporting scenarios, sometimes called cascading. A report that cascades in a report that is not a "final report" is known as a "prerequisite report".
Why are cascading user reports important?
The value of cascading user reports is that they allow you to identify and transform data in multiple stages, which previously would not have been possible in a single user report or would have involved some complex SQL writing. They are helpful when you need to build relationships between multiple sources of data to get a specific outcome.
You can also use cascading reports to filter information which could improve the performance of any subsequent reports, ensuring that only relevant information is passed through.
Some examples of using prerequisite user reports are:
If you have multiple company or system user reports from which you need to get the correct value for a particular assignment. E.g. one user report might confirm the region countries are grouped into, another might hold data about shipping costs which apply depending on the home and host regions. Your prerequisite user reports could fetch the relevant home and host countries for an assignment and match them to the correct region. Your final report then calculates the shipping cost based on the home and host region provided by the prerequisite reports
If you have multiple reports that all rely on the same complicated custom SQL logic, this can instead move into a single prerequisite report used by multiple main reports in order to lower maintenance costs. E.g. calculating the ages of dependents from their birth dates
Click here for details about how to create a cascading user report and how they work including important things to know about cascading user reports.