White-Out Conditional Formatting in Workspace

A client for a project I was recently working on requested consolidated custom reports to minimize the total number of reports they had to maintain. With that being said, the client asked that on one of the reports, we create custom conditional formatting that would white-out (font color = white, fill color = no fill, borders = none) particular sections of the report based on what element was selected in a SUBNM function. We utilized the PAW to complete this and build out the reports where it worked perfectly.

For example, our client wanted the top-half of the report to show when element 1 was selected in the dropdown, the middle half to show when element 2 was selected in the dropdown, and the bottom-half of the report when element 3 was selected in the dropdown. The only purpose of this white-out conditional formatting was for visual enhancements, not security (element security was already established). We found that when conditional formatting to white-out rows was set on the report, opening the report/websheet in Workspace returned errors and would not work.

Due to this, we had to take off that specific conditional formatting and let the users see all three sections regardless of what element was chosen in the SUBNM function dropdown.

We thought of other ways to go around this such as setting zero suppression, manually hiding/unhiding rows, etc. and none of them were conducive to the business logic. I believe that adding this feature would be incredibly useful for building out cohesive, polished, and practical reports.