BASIC REPORTING PART VIII: Using Your Report (REQUIRED)

NOTE: Due to a recent update to the reporting module, you may notice some differences between your system and the screenshots in this tutorial. We are working to update the screenshots, but in the meantime, the steps in the tutorial below are accurate/have not changed

BASIC REPORTING PART VIII: Using Your Report (REQUIRED)

1. Congratulations - you have created a report (or are using one of our out-of-the-box reports)! Now what? How do you actually use the report for its intended purpose?
2. The most basic way to interact with your report, no matter if you are using Advanced Search, the Basic Dashboard, a Smart Dashboard, a Custom Dashboard report, the Financials screen, the event attendee screen, a default report, or a custom report - is to run the report so that it appears on the screen.
   • For default and custom reports, you can run the report by finding the report in the navigation pane (Main Menu: Reports to get to the reports module index page, click the page icon on the left (under the + sign), clicking the three bars to the right of the report, and selecting Run Report.

     

   • For custom reports, you can also run the reports from Edit mode. See the Reporting Part II tutorial specific to the report interface you are using (Express View, Advanced, Cross-Tab, or Dashboard) for more details. To run the report from edit mode, click the Run button in the tool bar.

     EXPRESS VIEW INTERFACE

     

     ADVANCED REPORTS AND CROSS-TAB REPORTS INTERFACES

     

3. After running the report, you may wish to perform some sort of data analysis "on the fly" - that is, apply a variety of filters to look at your data various ways without manually editing the filters and then re-running the report (which is time consuming):
   • For an Advanced Search this can be a bit tedious, since you will have to use the Update Search button to return to the search criteria screen, change your criteria, and then re-run the search. For this reason, Advanced Search is not recommended for "on the fly" data analysis since it is the most time consuming option. You could set up two different searches and one each in two different browser tabs so you can do a side-by-side comparison. But, in general, if you are doing "on the fly" analysis," you are better off using one of the other reporting tools.

     

   • For the Basic Dashboard, you can perform "on the fly" analysis using the filters provided for each chart/table. The options here, however, are limited, but this is a good, quick option for the metrics provided. The limitation, however, is there is no ability to print/export the results. You can only view the results on the screen.

     

     

   • For the Smart Dashboards, you have a variety of interactive filter options provided in the left hand panel. You can quickly and easily filter all of the charts/tables on each Smart Dashboard with these filters and you can export and print the results (as well as see the underlying/drill down data). Smart Dashboards are one of the best options for "on the fly" analysis.

     

   • You can also create your own custom Dashboard Report, using the Dashboard Reports interface inside the reporting module. You can add your own filters to the Dashboard Report to filter the entire dashboard by the same criteria without having to re-run the report (that is, you can filter the entire dashboard "on the fly"). See the Part II tutorial on using the custom Dashboard Reports interface.

     

   • For the Financials Screen and Event Attendee Screens, you can apply a limited amount of filters to filter the data "on the fly" that shows on the screen. For the Financials screen, when you click the Export button, only the data that shows on the screen will export, giving you the ability to create a custom report/export your "on the fly" analysis. For the event attendee export, ALL attendees will export, regardless of what shows on the screen so there is no ability to export/print custom reports from this screen.

     FINANCIALS

     

     EVENT ATTENDEES

     

     

   • For custom reports created using the Express View Interface, adjusting filters can only be done in edit mode but it is very easy to toggle back and forth between edit mode and live data mode. It is also very easy to change grouping levels to look at your data in different ways. In the screen shots below, we have first grouped donations by Fund and then in the second by Campaign. However, this can only be done by toggling back to edit mode, changing grouping (done very easily in Express View) and then toggling back to live date. This mean you have to wait for the report to re-run each time, which means there is not a true "on the fly" analysis capability with Express View. Additionally, it is very easy to add a chart or graph to a report in Express View to make analysis/comparison easier. The charts in Express View ARE interactive, in that clicking on any series/value in the chart will filter the report to show just the items you clicked on.

     

     

     

     

     EXPRESS VIEW WITH CHART

     

     

   •  For default and custom reports created using the Advanced Reports or Cross-Tab Reports Interface, "on the fly" analysis is extremely easy. Advanced Reports and Cross-Tab Reports have an interactive mode ("Interactive HTML Viewer") built right in, so that when you run the report on the screen, it is, by default, interactive. Right clicking anywhere on the report will bring up a pop up menu that will allow the user to format or filter the report by what was clicked on (for example, if you want to highlight all memberships that have expired in Red, you can right click on an a Membership End Date that is close to today's date and then apply Red Text formatting to "all values equal to or less than" what you clicked on. Instantly all dates earlier than the date you clicked on will turn red. Clicking the arrow sign on the right will open the Interactive HTML filter panel. Here, the user will have access to any interactive filters the report creator has to be set up. You can also change the sort order of the report "on the fly" and hide/unhide columns "on the fly" from here as well. Learn more about using the Interactive HTML Viewer, including how to set up filters in the interactive filter panel, in this tutorial. Advanced Reports are one of, if not *the* best options for "on the fly" analysis. For more information on using the Interactive HTML Viewer/Mode, see this tutorial.
     

     

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4. Another way you may wish to interact with your finished report is to search it for a particular result.
   
   • For the Financials screen, Event Attendees screen, and Search Results screen, you can use your browsers' "find" function (generally on the menu bar) to search for items on the screen (while preserving your filter criteria/without changing the report).
   • For the Smart Dashboards, you need to export the detailed data to Excel or CSV to see underlying data (in order to search it).
   • For Default Reports and Custom Reports, you can search the results when in View/Run mode from the search bar at the top of the report screen.

     EXPRESS REPORT

     

     ADVANCED REPORT

     

5. Another way you may wish to interact with your finished report is to export it to another format.
• The Basic Dashboard cannot be exported.
• The Financials Screen, Event Attendee Export, Search Export, and Smart Dashboards can be exported to CSV (MS Excel).
• Default Reports and Custom Reports (Express View, Advanced Reports, and Cross-Tab Reports interfaces) can be exported to PDF, Rich Text Format (MS Word), Excel, and CSV (Excel without the formatting). This can be done from the navigation pane (without even running the report) by clicking the three bars to the right of the report name, from edit mode, and from run/view mode.

  FROM NAVIGATION PANE

  

  FROM EDIT MODE

  

  

  FROM RUN/VIEW MODE

  

  

6. You may also want to print your report. Basic Dashboards cannot be printed (you could take a screen shot and then print the picture/screen shot). All other report options (Smart Dashboards, Advanced Search, Financials, Event Attendees, Default Reports, and Custom Reports) all have an "export" button/function that will let you export your data to other formats and from there you can print the report.
7. You may also wish to email/send the report to yourself or another person.
   
   • Only Default and Custom Reports can be emailed directly from the system (all other reports that can be exported can, of course, be manually exported and then manually attached to an email). Default and Custom Reports can be manually emailed without first running the report from the navigation pane. They can also, from the navigation pane, be scheduled to automatically run and email the results to yourself and/or anyone else you want.

     

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