Overview

The Report Builder allows you to create a custom report. Once you have created the custom report, it can be used as a template to output new report documents each time the report is run. The diagram below illustrates how the Report Builder is used to generate a custom report.

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You can define one or more data sources and customise the output and the appearance of custom reports. The design of a report consists of two stages that allow you to define the source of the content and the layout of the report:

  • Data sources

    The first stage of the process requires you to create one or more data sources. You can create data sources that contain manually entered content, they do not require a link to the database. Alternatively, you can create data sources that are populated by data retrieved from the database. You can have one or many data sources depending on the complexity of the report that you are generating.

  • Report documents

    The second stage of the process requires you to create one or more report documents. The report documents editor includes a set of controls that allow you to define the format and layout and to link to data sources to populate the report. A report document can use data from any data sources defined in the report and a document can produce one or more outputs, for example, PDF and HTML reports.

Accessing Report Builder

To access the Report Builder use the following procedure:

  1. Select the Reports card from the dashboard.

  2. Select Create custom report, the Create custom report process is displayed.

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  1. Complete the following fields:

    • Name - this allows you to provide a name for the custom report that you want to create.
    • Applies to - this allows you to select a design or interface that the report applies to. This is used within Alloy to display relevant reports in various dialogs.

  2. When you have completed the fields select Create. The report is created and displayed in the Item details page.

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  1. Select the more actions button from the action bar.
  2. Select the Open report builder button to display the Report Builder, by default the Data sources tab is displayed.

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You are provided with two tabs:

  • Data sources - this tab allows you to define one or more data sources to be used to generate the content within the report.

  • Report documents - once the data sources have been configured you can use this tab to configure one or more documents to be associated with the report.

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