Report Designer Overview

Last modified: April 18, 2012 by

Our Report Designer was created with larger clients in mind, however, clients of any size can take advantage of our Report Designer to customize reports for free. We are using Data Dynamics to create and edit these reports, so the process is a little technical in nature. This tool will be best utilized by larger or more sophisticated firms with a resource who is fairly technical or has experience working with custom reporting tools. In terms of reporting technology this tool is fairly straightforward with a little bit of guidance, however, custom reporting in general is a relatively difficult concept.

What the Report Designer can do:

  • Change existing fields on reports to different available fields
  • Add new columns or rows and include new fields in those areas
  • Access to our standard Simple/Power Search capability and the ability to display any fields that are available in a search result list when creating a new report

What the Report Designer cannot do:

  • This is not an Ad-Hoc reporting tool that allows full access to your database or the ability to write custom queries
  • This solution will offer quite a bit of flexibility but certainly is not Ad-hoc since the ability to customize is still pre-programmed and optimized by Sendouts

Enable the Report Designer

  • Let Sendouts Support know you are interested in using the Report Designer
  • Once Enabled, there is a User Security Setting that will you will need to enable for those you wish to grant access to this feature

How to Use

From the Report Module, you’ll see new options in the Edit Toolbar and also in the Right-click Menu. You’ll have the option to add a new report, edit an existing report or duplicate an existing report. These options have slightly different behavior depending on the type of report:

  • Add New – You will be able to add a completely new report or duplicate an existing report, this could be one that the you created or that Sendouts created.
  • Edit — If you select Edit on a report that was created by Sendouts, either custom or standard, we will actually duplicate that report following the rules above. We do this so that users can not accidentally change one of our reports in a way that was not desired. If you select Edit on a report they created, even if it was originally a Sendouts report that they modified, it will open that actual report to be edited.
  • Duplicate — If you choose to duplicate a report it will recreate the report exactly and save the original. If this is a report that Sendouts customized for you prior to February 1st, 2012, the report will be able to be duplicated, but the formatting will not be exactly right because it was created using a different report tool

When adding a new report, select if you want to add an entirely new report or duplicate an existing report:

If you create your own report:

  • You will have access to all of the fields that are available in list view (including custom fields) and the search criteria will be the exact same as what can be used in each module.
  • You will be able to pick what category of report it will be, each module will be included in that list. Currently, there is only one data type for each module.
  • You will also have the ability to pick a report “Layout,” this will give you some of the formatting, rather than starting with a completely blank report. This allows you to build a report by simply dragging and dropping fields into a template.

  • This report example is showing a list of Candidates, grouped by the job they are matched to. You can imagine it as being the same as if I just did a workflow search, but rather than sorting by Job Order, there is a grouping.
  • Each of the fields were dragged from the available fields on the left, into the report in the middle. If you want to change the size or font, that can be done using the options on the right side.
  • Report Designer also allows you to perform calculations on the data in the report, these calculations are written very similar to how you would write them in Excel. That can also be done on the right side or by selecting the “Open Wizard,” option in the right-click menu or in blue link toward the bottom of the screen.
  • Some of the calculations and advanced features you can add include:
  • Preview your Report from the toolbar along the top, close the Preview by clicking Preview again

Learn more specifics about our Report Designer HERE

Pricing

All clients can use the Report Tool at no charge.  You will have access to all of the Sendouts University help, any webinars and can also take advantage of the help offered through Data Dynamics, but they will not be able to contact the Sendouts Support Team for assistance.

Clients who would like additional support can purchase the Reporting package.  It is $500 and includes:

  • 2 hours of 1 on 1 support
  • 1 Custom data set with up to 10 fields
  • Access to additional support at $99/hour

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