Open the report created in the previous recipe in Cognos Report Studio for further amendments.

In the report created in the previous recipe, we managed to show data filtered by the shipment month. To improve the reports look and feel, we will sort the output to highlight the best-selling products. To start this, perform the following steps:

The sort option by default works at the detailed level. This means the non-grouped items are sorted by the specified criteria within their own groups.

Here we want to sort the product lines that are grouped (not the detailed items). In order to sort the groups, we need to define a more advanced sorting using the Edit Layout Sorting options shown in this recipe.

You can also define sorting for the whole list report from the Edit Layout Sorting dialog box. You can use different items and ordering for different groups and details.

You can also choose to sort certain groups by the data items that are not shown in the report. You need to bring only those items from source (model) to the query, and you will be able to pick it in the sorting dialog.