Report Desk: Developing Custom Reports

Report Desk: Developing Custom Reports

Release Date: 8/3/2020
Version 8.6

Background

Sometimes, a developer will need to create a Report Desk report for a particular customer.  This may be on a contract basis, where the report will only be for the particular customer.  Therefore, it would not be a base (B) report or an enhanced (E) report,  because they automatically would get widely distributed.  It would need to be a custom (C) report that is derived from a base or enhanced report.  

If there is no existing report to derive from, see the following Knowledge Base article for details about how to create one:


You must run Report Desk as an end-user (registry entry ELIRD not set as a NETcellent developer) to create a custom (C) report design that can be exported, sent to the customer and imported there.

Process

  • Run Report Desk and bring up the existing report.
  • Press the Save New button to create the new, custom report.
  • Make any desired changes to this new report and then save it.
  • When the new report is completed, export the design and send it to your customer (note the default export/import directory -- you may want to use it at the customer site for convenience),
  • Run Report Desk at the customer site and import the custom report.
The customer now will have the ability to run the custom report.

In certain circumstances, you may want to make sure the customer cannot override an existing report.  When you export a report, you may select The Import side must create a new report option, below, to make sure the customer automatically creates a new report:




Note

When the project to develop this capability started, we specified that a special registry value would allow a NETCELLENT or CYBERMAC developer to create a new custom report that was not derived from an existing report.  The code that would allow that is there, but it is not completely tested.  Look for "REPORTDEV" in the code if that ability needs to be provided in the future.

Modified programs: EL860RD, UDRDesign, UDTDesign
JEG







    • Related Articles

    • Report Desk: Managing Custom Reports

      Release Date: 4/28/23 Version: Elliott 8.6 Background NETcellent and other developers create and maintain all Report Desk templates, in order to make sure the SELECT statements for the reports are as efficient as possible. When an Elliott customer ...

    • Report Desk: Running Reports

      Release Date: 4/28/23 Version 8.6 Report Desk provides a powerful developing environment for Netcellent to deliver modern reports with rich elements of proportional spacing fonts, graphics, shading and line drawing. It allows us to output reports to ...

    • Report Desk: Developing a Customer-Specific Base Report by Using License Field

      Release Date: 5/20/2023 Revised Date: 09/21/2023 Versions: V8.6 Background Users can always customize a Netcellent-developed "base" report. When the requirement is for a relatively simple variation on an existing report, sometimes Netcellent staff ...

    • Report Desk: Customizing Reports

      Release Date: 4/28/23 Version: 8.6 Customizing Reports Once a user has been given rights to modify Elliott Report Desk User Design Reports (UDR), they will have access to two additional buttons on the report parameter screens. SQL: This button will ...

    • Report Desk: Running & Designing Reports Basics

      Release Date: 03/24/2021 Revised: 08/30/2021 Version: 8.6 & Up Report Desk is a new report-developing platform for Elliott Business Software. It is based on the PSQL relational engine accessing the Elliott database, which has the potential to make ...