Report Desk: Developing Custom Reports
Version 8.6
Background
Sometimes, a developer will need to create a Report Desk report for a particular customer. This may be on a contract basis, where the report will only be for the particular customer. Therefore, it would not be a base (B) report or an enhanced (E) report, because they automatically would get widely distributed. It would need to be a custom (C) report that is derived from a base or enhanced report.If there is no existing report to derive from, see the following Knowledge Base article for details about how to create one:
http://support.elliott.com/knowledgebase/articles/1863640-developing-a-new-elliott-v8-6-report-desk-user-def
You must run Report Desk as an end-user (registry entry ELIRD not set as a NETcellent developer) to create a custom (C) report design that can be exported, sent to the customer and imported there.
Process
- Run Report Desk and bring up the existing report.
- Press the Save New button to create the new, custom report.
- Make any desired changes to this new report and then save it.
- When the new report is completed, export the design and send it to your customer (note the default export/import directory -- you may want to use it at the customer site for convenience),
- Run Report Desk at the customer site and import the custom report.
In certain circumstances, you may want to make sure the customer cannot override an existing report. When you export a report, you may select The Import side must create a new report option, below, to make sure the customer automatically creates a new report:
Note
When the project to develop this capability started, we specified that a special registry value would allow a NETCELLENT or CYBERMAC developer to create a new custom report that was not derived from an existing report. The code that would allow that is there, but it is not completely tested. Look for "REPORTDEV" in the code if that ability needs to be provided in the future.Modified programs: EL860RD, UDRDesign, UDTDesign
JEG