Report Properties
Important properties of the report are set in the top part of the report form's design page (see screenshot below). These properties are described below.
Set access to report forms
The Form Access setting (see screenshot) enables you to specify which roles—and, therefore, users—may access the form. Note that the Admin role has full access to all forms.
Grouping of records
The records of the container can be grouped on a maximum of three fields. For example, you could sort contracts on the basis of their status or you could sort companies by country.
To group records, click the Group by option's Edit button (see screenshot) and then select the fields on which to group (up to a maximum of three fields). The first field you select becomes the first grouping criterion, and so on. In the report, the values of the selected grouping criterion will be shown in the first column of the table. If you have multiple criteria, then the values will be grouped first on the first criterion. Then, within each value of the first criterion, grouping will take place on the second criterion. Next, within each value of the second criterion, grouping will take place on the third criterion. So, it is important to select the grouping criteria (fields) in the order you want them.
For example, the screenshot below shows a report in which grouping is based on the expiry date of contracts, and on two criterion: Year is the first criterion, and Month is the second criterion. The first value of the first (Year) criterion is 2020. Within the set of records for 2020, records are grouped by month. In our case, there are four months (June, August, September, and December), with one record in each month. Records are then grouped by month for the next Year value, which is 2021: there are six records for the month of August (and no other month in 2021). Note also the summary values on the right hand side, where the count of records is given for each month and each year. Summary values are created on fields, and are described in the next topic, The Report Table.
Note about grouping of Date-type records: If a field is created that has a type of Date (format: Month Day, Year; for example, Dec 31, 2020), then this field will automatically be available for grouping on three criteria: (i) the month part only; (ii) the year part only; (iii) the entire date filed (month, day, and year). This enables you to split the date field into two additional grouping criteria and thus to separately group records on months and years.
If you select the option to hide records, only the summary lines of groups will be shown. The actual records will be hidden. In the screenshot above, for example, the actual records are shown. The summary lines on the right provide a count of the records.
Filtering records
To filter records, select the Filter option and then select any one of the filters that have been defined for the current container (see screenshot above).