Reports are required to retrieve any information regarding the organization. This may be reports of all the employees in a certain OU of the organization, tax details of a certain party during a particular period, material consumption report, etc. These are all standard reports.

Hence GoodBooks offers you the ability to design and customize your own reports. This is useful when your reporting requirements are very unique in nature. Follow these steps to design dynamic reports:

(Click on the links to jump to that section of the page.)

Step 1. Adding add on fields in Report Vs Fields.

Step 2. Creating customized view.

Step 3. Selecting fields for a customized view.

Step 4. Creating a menu to hold the view.

Step 5. Adding customized menus with Module Vs Menu.

Step 6. Enabling menus in Menu set.

Step 7. Enabling menus in Role Vs Menu.

Step 8. Setting filters for each Menu.

STEP 1

1. Adding add on fields in Report Vs Fields.

Reports menu allows the user to control how the reports are to be generated. Reports vs fields is a part of this feature where you are able to show reports based on the add on fields. Follow these instructions and descriptions to customize the display of your reports. Some fields will not be elaborated as it is for developers only.

Fields & its description:

• Module

The specific report to be generated must belong to a module. Select that module from this field.

• Name & Code

Choose the name of the report you want to edit from the given list. Selecting the correct name will let the code to be selected automatically.

•  Type

Select standard radio button from this field.

• Report View Type

The report view type should be grid.

• Dynamic fields

Check this option if it is for a single add on field. Otherwise this will be applicable for multiple fields. This feature allows you to load entries into the table by simply selecting the entity.

•  Field Name & Title

Type the field name and title in these fields.

Display Sl. No. displays the serial number in the report.

• Type

Select the type as string for your designing purpose.

• Width

Enter the width required for the fields. Each character is worth a value of 10 in width. E.g. If you want to allow 20 characters in the field, width should be 200.

•  Format

Type the format of the add on field, which should be, in case of:

Numbers – ###0.00

Letters – A-Z

Date – dd/MM/yyyy

There are also provisions that allow you to control the display of the reports.

Saving and deleting the entries:

After entering your values, click on the save button below to save all the details.

Edit the saved details by clicking on the update button.

Similarly delete any entry by choosing the entry and then click on the delete button. This is applicable to all the other screens as well.

STEP 2

2. Creating a customized view.

Report view can be used for changing the view of the reports including the page format, orientation, etc.

Fields & its description:

• Module

Select the module of the report that you want to change.

• Report

According to the module you have chosen, select the report that is to be changed.

• View

Enter the name of the report view in this table field.

• Type

You can select the type as grid or HTML based on your requirements.

• Default

Checking this will enable it as the first value.

• Applicable Menu

Shows all the reports where this setting will be applicable.

•  Page Format & Orientation

Select the page format from A0 to A10  and orientation can be either portrait or landscape.

• Column Freeze

Enter the number of columns to be locked when displayed in reports. E.g. If your value is 3, then the first three columns will be locked. This is a usability feature while scrolling reports.

STEP 3

3. Selecting fields for a customized view.

Report view fields are used for setting views for the reports.

Fields & its description:

• Report

Select the report from the list.

• Report View

Select the specific report view in this field.

•  Report View Save As

Enter the name by which this report view is to be saved. This overwrites the save but keeps both the records.

• Display

Selecting Checked will display only the checked entries in the table. Unchecked shows only the entries that aren’t checked. Deselect will deselect all the checked fields.

D – Display, allows you to decide which entries are to be displayed.

M – Merge, combines the fields together.

G – Group, allows entries to be defined as groups.

S – Sub Total, adds each value of the group to display the total.

GT – Grand Total, this is the overall sum of all the entries values.

STEP 4

4. Creating menus to hold the view.

Menu is responsible for defining the screens (including reports) and its parent along with its characteristics. Features like assigning parent menus to screens, giving descriptions, nature of displaying reports, etc., are possible here. Make changes only to the instructed fields in order to design reports.

Fields & its description:

• Module

Select the module where the screen or report that you want to edit is present. After selecting the module, a branch like structure consisting of various menus, sub menus and parent menus will be displayed.

• Under

In this field, enter the parent menu. Preferably, as you are designing reports, keep this as Reports. This depends solely on the branch of screens.

• Type

Choose the type of screen in this field. This should be set as Report.

• Nature

The nature should be report or Parent menu based on the screen to be created. If this is a menu containing several reports then parent menu will be suitable. If this screen itself is a report then select as such.

The next few fields should be kept as none.

• Status

Keep the status as Active or else it wont be activated.

STEP 5

5. Adding a customized menu with Module vs Menu.

Module vs menu displays all the menus available under that particular module. This also includes the master, transaction and report parent menus.

Fields & its description:

• Module

Select the required module in this list.

All the available menus and its respective parents will be generated in the form of a table.

Add rows by clicking on the Add Row button. Click on the tabular fields and select the menu and its parent. Delete rows by clicking on button.

STEP 6

6. Enabling menus in Menu Set.

Menu set is used to set menus to each client and module. You can change the visibility of menus using this screen.

Fields & its description:

• Applicable Type

Applicable type is used to indicate where these settings will be applied. All Client implies that the settings apply for all the clients. Client specific and Trade Specific will allow changes for particular clients and trade respectively.

• Client

Select the client from the available list.

• Name

Choose the menu set name from this field.

• Module

Select the required module from the given list.

The table will have details regarding the menu sets. Control the visibility of the menu sets and name by which it is displayed. Activation of this menu to others is possible only by checking the visible check box.

STEP 7

7. Enabling menus in Role Vs Menu.

Role – Menu is responsible for granting access rights to the user roles that use GoodBooks in your organization. You are able to control the user role rights of each unique user. User A might have certain rights that user B might not. Grant rights specific to individual screens.

Fields & its description:

• Role

Select the role of the user from this field.

• Module

Choose the respective module in which you want to control the rights of the user.

After selecting the module, the menu tree appears. Here you can navigate to the specific screen that you want to edit or just click on any menu or parent menu to get its list of screens. The screen list is a table of screens that shows all the operations that can be performed on it. In the example above, only the Monthly Attendance is chosen.

Granting the rights:

Each menu contains operations (insert, update, delete, etc.) that can be activated or deactivated by checking or unchecking the respective boxes.

Select or deselect multiple operations by clicking on the same.

STEP 8

8. Setting filters for each menu.

Web Service Setting screen can be used to design filters to the reports.

Fields & its description:

• Module

Select the required module from this list.

• Type

Select the report option from this field.

• Service

Specify the service used for the reports in this field.

• Report

Choose the specific report that is to edited.

• Menu

Select the respective menu from the given options.

• Report As

If there is a report setting that is to be duplicated with respect to only the attributes of the report, use this field to save as a previously saved report. This helps you to avoid checking the table individually every time for similar reports.

• Menu As

Similar to Report As, use this feature to imitate the menu that you want to save as.

After following the above steps correctly, your customized report shall be created successfully.