Reporting Procedures

Reporting offers many ways to create and generate reports. Initially, many of the reports have default settings for the report's options. You can change both the content of the report and its formatting if the default settings do not meet your needs.

For reports in which you can select columns, you can also create your own calculated fields on the Add Calculated Field dialog box and include them on reports.

After you set reporting options, you can save your settings for use in future reporting sessions. Saved favorite report definitions save you a lot of time if you generate the same reports on a regular basis.

Related Topics:

  • Creating Reports and Favorites
    Reporting provides several methods for creating reports.
  • Reporting Options
    Use sets of options to control both the content and the formatting of a report.
  • Selecting Data
    To select data for a report, you first select the type of records from which data is to be drawn. You can then restrict the data retrieval to a specific subset of the available data. The type of search that you use depends upon the complexity of your search.
  • Formatting
    The formatting options on the Columns tab, Sorting/Grouping tab, Graph tab, and Layout tab of the Options dialog box for a report directly affect both the content and layout of that report. You control which columns are included, the order in which they appear, column width, and many other formatting elements.
  • Sorting and Grouping
    Sort and group data on a report to make it easier to locate and review the information included on the report. You can select multiple sorting and grouping criteria for a single report. The sequence in which the selected criteria are listed on the Sorting/Grouping tab determines which sort is applied first.
  • Previewing Reports
    Before you print or download a report, you can preview it on your computer to make sure it contains the data you need in the format that you want. If necessary, you can change the report options and preview it again before you print or download it.
  • Drilling Down for Detail on a Previewed Report (Desktop)
    You can drill down from a previewed report to display more information about a value on the report. DPS displays the related detail in a separate window.
  • Printing Reports
    You can print from the Preview window or from the Reports tab or Archived Reports tab of the Reporting form.
  • Archiving Reports
    DPS enables you save a report temporarily so that you can quickly regenerate it with the original data. Your archived reports are displayed on the Archived Reports tab in Reporting. DPS saves each archived report the number of hours you specify when you create the archived copy.
  • Scheduling Reports and Profiles
    You can schedule a favorite report, a standard report, or a profile to be generated at another time.
  • Sending Reports as Email Attachments
    You can send copies of reports as attachments to standard email messages.
  • Downloading Reports
    You can download and save any report in a variety of file formats. For reports with multiple pages, you can specify which pages to include in the file.
Parent Topic: Reporting