Server and Presentation Variables and Displaying in Dashboard Report

Question

Hello I am running into dead ends trying to get what seems a simple request implemented. The user would like to be prompted for a Date range and have the dates they select displayed in the Title of the report, they also would like the default data set returned be the prior month (so not all data is returned when they initially run the Dashboard)
I have a Dashboard prompt where the user is prompted for a Date Range (Date column). My first issue was being able to display the Date range in the title. I used the below post from Venkash
http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/oracle-bi-ee-101332-between-prompts-for-date-columns-using-presentation-variables/
I set the Case statements in the Dashboard prompt to equal then passed them to a Presentation variable. I then used these to be displayed in the Title of my Answers report.
The issue now is automating prior month, I was informed I would have to set up a Repository Variables to initialize two columns - one bringing in Prior Month First Day and one bringing in Prior Month Last Day. I then set these as the defaults in the Dashboard Prompt.
This works, however, my problem now is when the values are displayed in the report initially, they have the value of TimeStamp '01-01-2008 00:00:00'. When I put in values in the Dashboard Prompt and hit go the values are replaced correctly with whatever I put in - 1/1/2008.
I assume the TimeStamp shows because of the initialization I am doing in the repository, I don't see any way of changing this so it reflects just the date, I am using the sysdate in the formula on the repository - I tried converting to_char first setting the format then converting back to Date. But still no luck.
Has anyone else encountered this? Or am I even going about it the wrong way? Sorry for the long post, I look forward to any input, thanks!!!

Answer 1

No it errors out when I try to Cast the server variable as a Date in the Dashboard Prompt interface.
The variable I created in the repository (Server/Dynamic) has the formula:
SELECT Add_Months(TO_DATE((to_char(sysdate,'mm')) || '/' || '01/' || to_char(sysdate,'YYYY'),'MM/DD/YYYY'),-5) from dual
This is set up with an Initialization block that when I first run the report it displays in the title
TIMESTAMP '2007-10-01 00:00:00'
This will display no matter what I change the Initialization block to (01, ab, etc) so I guess it is something from the formula.
Now when a user does enter a value into the prompt box and hits GO the title changes to reflect a date and looks great (10/1/2007), but I guess this is because it is now passing the database column value to this presentation variable.
I assume this all revolves around the formula I am creating in the repository to return a default of 10/1/2007 so it can be displayed in the report header like that and not with the TimeStamp format above.
I appreciate all your input, thanks again!