Conditional Formatting in BI Publisher and OTBI

Why conditional formatting matters

A table of numbers is hard to interpret quickly. Conditional formatting guides the eye to what matters — a red cell means action needed, green means all good. This transforms a data dump into a decision support tool.

Conditional formatting in OTBI analyses

1. Create your analysis with the measure column
2. Right-click the column header → Format Column → Conditional Format
3. Add Condition: Column [Amount] > 100000
4. Set formatting: background colour, font colour, font weight
5. Add multiple conditions in order — first matching condition wins

Example traffic light for DSO:

• DSO < 30: background green
• DSO 30-45: background amber
• DSO > 45: background red

Conditional images in OTBI

Replace cell values with icons using conditional formatting:

1. Edit column formula: CASE WHEN status='COMPLETE' THEN 'img src="/analyticsRes/check.png"' ELSE 'img src="/analyticsRes/warning.png"' END
2. Set column data format to HTML

Fusion Cloud includes a set of traffic light and status images under /analyticsRes/.

Conditional formatting in BIP RTF templates

In the RTF template, use XSL formatting commands:

Background color:

<?xdo-xslfo:background-color;'xdofx:if(AMOUNT > 50000, "lightgreen", "white")'?>

Font color:

<?xdo-xslfo:color;'xdofx:if(VARIANCE < 0, "red", "black")'?>

Conditional bold:

<?xdo-xslfo:font-weight;'xdofx:if(STATUS="OVERDUE", "bold", "normal")'?>

Conditional rows (show/hide entire rows)

In RTF, wrap a table row in a conditional:

<?if:AMOUNT > 0?>
[table row content]
<?end if?>

This eliminates zero-value rows that clutter the report.

In Excel output

BIP Excel output supports conditional formatting but with a different approach: use the BIP-specific conditional properties in the template. Note that Excel conditional formatting set via BIP is static (applied at generation time) not dynamic Excel conditional format rules.