Example: creating a report

Please have a look at User Reports administering first.

For the brief demonstration of the designer functioning let us create a report based on the query - Top 10 Clients (by Invoice) (ten most profitable clients).

1. Switch to Custom Reports on Corporate Settings tab of Projetex 2006 Server Administrator.

2. Click New button; enter report name and description in the New Custom Report window and click OK.

FastReport window (report designer) will open automatically.

4. Click New on the File menu. This opens the wizard application, which will help us create the report from the beginning to the end.

5. Select Standard Report Wizard. Firstly, we should select the dataset for our report. Let it be the previously built report Top 10 Clients (by Invoices).

As we are going to build a report based on two fields, client name and the sum of invoices (F_1 and SUM correspondingly), add these fields. As a result we can see the screen similar to that on the following screenshot:

6. The next steps can easily be omitted, but we still recommend you to select the Style tab, choose style for your report and then click Finish. So, the report is ready, and you will see it in the designer, similar to that shown on the following screenshot.

Now you can preview the report (Preview button is on the toolbar in the upper part of the window). As you can see – everything is quite simple. Preview is shown on the following screenshot.

Then you can edit the report with the help of designer at your discretion according to its purpose. To edit parameters of the report, double-click the required cell, for example, F_1 or SUM, as in the shown above report, and this will take you to the Memo window, equipped with all the necessary functions.

7. Save the newly created report (File > Save) and close the report designer window, you are back on the Custom Reports on Corporate Settings tab of Projetex 2006 Server Administrator.

If you want to save this report in a separate file in the Report folder of Projetex (so that you can send it to other Projetex users), select the report in the list and click Save button.

This way of using queries in reports leads to adding the query to the report, and each time you try to modify the query you will be warned that the report will possibly be not available after you implement changes. But if you have just downloaded the reports into the empty base, (for example, while using the pre-released version) – the above mentioned links between the queries and reports do not yet exist, and we strongly recommend you to open each report one by one, and the program will automatically create such links.

Now the users of the client application (Workstation) can access this report. For them to be able to see the sample report demonstration, it should also be built in the program. To make the sample report demonstration visible for Workstation users, select this report and click Set button of the Custom Reports page (on the Corporate Settings tab of Projetex 2006 Server Administrator).

Another advantage of working with reports is building queries within the reports themselves. In this case the queries will be stored together with the reports, and, as a result, the links with queries, and the queries themselves will not be needed any more. But we recommend you to use this type of report building only when you are familiar with SQL.
See Also: Example: Creating a query within the report