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How a Group Section Works

Figure 10 illustrates the structure of a simple report that employs a group section.

Figure 10.  Group Report Structure

This includes the following major components:

• Report Design. This is the top-level component in a report; it corresponds to the ROD file in which it resides. There are no special features of the report design component for group reports.
• Report Section. A report section groups together components that define the source of data, physical layout, and behavior of a master report or subreport. The group section is a child of the report section whose records the group section will cluster.
• DataStream. The datastream component defines the source of data for the report section. There are no special features of a datastream for a grouped report section, other than the requirement that the data be sorted with the group field as the primary sort key.
• Group Section. The group section component implements grouping and group break behavior for the records in its parent report section. The group section has a Key property that defines the field that determines how the records are grouped, and other properties that define grouping behavior, such as whether each group break causes a page break.
• Page Header Frame. In a report section with a group section, the page header frame is a child of the group section, not of the report section. The contents of the page header frame are displayed at the beginning of each new group, in addition to the beginning of each page. The page header contains group break information, such as the sales stage name for each group of opportunities by sales stage.
• Content Frame. The content frame defines the layout of one report row, as it does in a nongrouped report section. However, it is a child of the group section, rather than of the report section.
• After Section. The After section defines what appears in the report following each group. This section can be omitted or used to display group totals. See Adding Group Totals to Reports for details.

Examining a Report with a Group Section

To learn more about the configuration of a simple grouped report, it is helpful to open a standard Siebel report of this type in Actuate e.Report Designer Professional and study it. A good report to study for this purpose is the Contacts By State parameterized report, which is invoked from a view in the Contacts screen (typically the My Contacts view). You should examine the report output in Siebel Sales, and the report design in Actuate e.Report Designer Professional, leaving both open to compare them.

To generate the Contacts By State report in Siebel Sales

1. Open Siebel Sales.
2. Click the Contacts screen tab.
3. Select the Contacts List on the link bar.

   My Contacts is the default view.

4. While in the My Contacts view, click the Reports button and from the drop-down menu select Contacts By Category.

   The Contact Parameters window appears.

5. From the Sort By drop-down menu, select State, and click Finish.

   The Contacts By State report appears.

To open the report design for the Contacts By State report

1. Open Actuate e.Report Designer Professional.
2. Choose File > Open.
3. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the \Siebdev\RPTSRC\ENU\STANDARD folder (or the equivalent on your computer) and choose cntstate.rod.

   If your installation uses a non-English version of Siebel eBusiness Applications, you do not have an \ENU folder. Instead, you have a folder in the appropriate language code for your installation, such as \DEU for Germany.

   See Global Deployment Guide for a list of three-letter International Standards Organization (ISO) language extensions.

Figure 11 shows the cntstate.rod report design file in Actuate e.Report Designer Professional.

Figure 11.  Contacts By State Report Design

Explore the report design, compare design elements to the corresponding features in the report output, and right-click components to view their property lists.

Notice the following features of this report design:

• The group section component, ssGrpState, has child page header and content frames. These are ssFrmCONTACTHeader1 and ssFrmCONTACTContent. These frames are subclassed from the sscntct.rol custom component library because the same header and content frames are used in most of the contact reports. For more information on custom component libraries, see Using a Custom Component Library.
• If you expand the page header component (ssFrmCONTACTHeader1), you will see a child content frame (ssFrmBlueBack1). If you expand the child content frame, you see the column heading labels that appear in the page header.
• Another child component of the page header is a data control called ssTxtCONTACTHeader1. When you select this control in the component tree, it is also selected in the layout pane (the sample text in the control says Subclass Me).
• The page header data control (ssTxtCONTACTHeader) displays the state name abbreviation for each new state. You can see this in the generated report in Siebel Sales. The property in the data control that configures this behavior is ValueExp. The value of this property is ssState, which is the datastream variable corresponding to the State field in the Contact business component.
• If you examine the properties in the group section component (ssGrpState), you will notice that it has a Key property and that this property has a setting of ssState. The Key property value in the group section component determines when a sort break occurs, namely when there is a change in the value in the corresponding field between business component records. The change in group key values triggers the redisplay of the page header with new values.

In the next section, you will create a similar report design yourself.