Customized Reports

Hi All,

I designed a report yesterday to pull up only unbilled charges in Accounts. We refined the report until it suited our purposes perfectly - both in formatting and output details. This morning a co-worker brought up the report, but all selected fields had been lost....making it a generic system report, but with my customized title.

I thought perhaps I had forgotten to save my final design, so I went back in, reset all fields, made sure I saved the design and ran a test report to ensure that it was what we had set up yesterday. Now I am able to access this....but my co-worker still gets the generic report when selecting this custom report (even after logging out of the system and back in again).

I am puzzled......but fairly certain that this should not be happening - unless custom reports need to be redesigned every time they are run?

Hello AndreaF,

Custom reports should be designed once, saved and you should then be able to use them for as long as needed. From time to time and if needed, you may also customize them further and perform additional changes.

I am not sure exactly why your co-worker still sees the old report layout.

I would recommend that you try the following:
(1) Make sure no one is using the report designer and the reports module in general
(2) Log out, log in again
(3) Generate your customized report to make sure all is working well for you
(4) Copy your customized report (the good one) to a new report and provide it with a different name
(5) Run the copied report to make sure everything is working well for you
(6) Have your co-worker log into the system and try to generate the newly report you've just copied (the new one with the new name)

Please let us know the status.

Doron

Hi Doron,

I logged out of Commit, and back in again. When I went back to my customized report, all selected fields had once again dropped the custom presets - although the actual design view held the layout formatting. Just to add to the "weird" factor - before I logged out, the 4 other custom reports I had under the "Charges" heading were all showing the same settings as my newly designed report. When I logged off & back in again, ALL reports were back to basic system settings. The only one I would care about saving is the one I designed yesterday - is there a way to delete all the other previous custom reports now?

Hi AndreaF,

Yes, it is possible to delete customized reports...

Anyway, I suspect something may have damaged the customized reports table and I would first like us to solve or try to find what is causing this.

Please try the following:

(1) Make sure no one is using RangerMSP client
(2) Stop RangerMSPWebInterface and RangerMSPServer services (if used)
(3) Backup (zip) the <server>\RangerMSP\Db folder
(4) Make sure you have Windows Full Access rights to RangerMSP server folders and files
(5) Log into RangerMSP client with a SysAdmin user (probably you)
(6) Close any open window
(7) Activate the following option: Tools > Systems Tools > Advanced > Rebuild Indexes
(8) Open the reports window and try to generate your Custom reports

Please get back to us with the status.

Thanks,
Doron

Hi Doron,

I did all the steps as outlined - but the results were the same as earlier. Perhaps I have misunderstood the capabilities of Customized Reports? The report I created yesterday was under the Charges category. I expected all selections under the groups: Item Group, Billing Status, Stage, Billing Units as well as the Expand screen, to all remain set in the report. Instead, the only details that are not lost any time I log back in are the actual layout design. I am attempting to create a report that may be run anytime, by any staff, without having to recreate it??

Hi AndreaF,

I think I may have misunderstood you on the first time, but I believe I get it now...

Creating a custom report includes two steps: customizing the report layout, and filtering the reports.

The first step includes copying the report to the custom reports, clicking the Design button, and then changing the actual report layout and database fields which will be displayed in the layout. Once you save the design and exit the Report Designer window, this new layout will be saved, and any user which will generate this custom report (from the Custom reports list), will see the customize layout.

The filtering step is done by clicking the Generate button, which opens the Report Generation Window. Here you can filter the report results to display only the results you need (e.g. by charge dates, by employees, by customers, etc. etc.). The filtering settings are not saved between sessions, and you should filter the reports each time you generate them. I believe this is the part you were referring to.

I hope this makes more sense now...

Doron

Saving the filter will be a big assist to us.
With our reports we run regularly, we must always reset the filter.
Saving the filter will save time and increase accuracy.

I agree allenc - the idea we had was that I would create the reports, which could then be run anytime by other staff. If the filters were able to retain their settings, we would greatly reduce the possibility of accidentally displaying data with different factors affecting the outcome.

With all my testing lately, I have quite a few test reports in the system that I would like to clear out - but still cannot find a way to delete them?

Yes, you can delete your custom test reports. TO delete the reports, you should select the report, then click the "Reports" menu and select the Delete option.