Designing Reports Using Custom Smart Fields

Access RDA.

1. On the Director, under Application Reports, select the appropriate Report Director template from the pull-down menu and click Next.

   This information is derived from the description you entered when you created the Report Director template.

2. On the Page Header Details form, accept the page header defaults and click Next.

3. On the Business View Selection Options form, select the option I'll use the pre-defined business view and click Next.

   The predefined business view is the business view that you defined on the Building Blocks tab for the Report Director template. You can select one of the other two business view selection options to override this default.

4. On the Select Columns form, move the appropriate smart field from the Available Smart Fields list to Columns in Report Section.

   The available smart fields are derived from the Smart Field template that you associated with the Report Director template. All smart fields in the attached Smart Field template are available to the report developer.

5. On the Smart Field Name form, change the Variable Name to describe the smart field (for example, First Quarter).

   • Change the Report Column Headings fields to describe the field on the report.

     For example, to describe the first quarter data, enter First Quarter on line 1 and Sales on line 2.

     If you selected a Report Director template that includes a smart field that displays column headings, the Smart Column Heading option is available. Instead of changing the column heading names, select this option to enable the smart field to populate the column headings based on information that you enter in the subsequent forms.

     Subsequent forms are dependent on the selected Report Director template. For example, using the quarterly sales scenario you might see these forms:

   • Smart Field Parameters

     This form displays the user prompt data item that you created. The information that you entered in the item glossary appears in the center of the form. Enter an appropriate value in the Enter the Literal field based on the glossary information. If you created multiple user prompts, you are presented with additional forms for each prompt. For quarterly sales, enter the quarter that you want calculated and included on the report. For first quarter sales, enter 1 in this field.

   • Smart Field Data Selection

     This form displays the data items that you defined on the Smart Field Template Criteria Revisions form when adding the smart field to the smart field template. If you defined any of the data items as requiring a range of values, the data item displays a From and a To field.

     If you intend to define the same data selection for each smart field column, you can leave this form blank and just fill in the data selection for the report.

6. When you have completed all smart field parameters, click Finish.

   Add additional smart field columns to the report. For example, for quarterly sales, you can select the smart field again and enter 2 on the Smart Field Parameter form to calculate and display sales for the second quarter.

7. When you are finished adding smart field columns to the report, click Next.

8. On the Data Sequencing Help form, click Next.

   The Data Sequencing Help form displays the Data Sequence and Level Break Fields that you defined in the Report Director template. The fields that appear under Report Grouping are defined as level break fields and are the first two fields you entered into the detail area in the Report Director template. You can remove these fields as level breaks by clearing the option.

   The fields that appear under Report Detail are the additional fields that you included in the Report Director template and are also used for data sequencing. Click each field that you want to include as a level break field so that they appear in the empty field directly above them.

   You can override the predefined data sequencing and level breaks by selecting the I'd like to set up the sequencing and level breaking myself option under Advanced. You can define data sequencing on the Section Data Sequencing form. The fields listed in the Available Columns section are fields from the attached business view. The subsequent Define Sort Properties form enables you to define level breaks.

9. On the Help with Section Data Selection form, create either a balance sheet or an income statement and indicate whether you want to add to the data selection, and click Next.

   Note: This form only appears if you defined the associated Report Director template to display financial criteria.

10. On the Data Selection form, define the appropriate data selection.

    This form appears if you defined the selected Report Director template to display generic criteria or if you selected the option Set up data selection manually on the Help with Section Data Selection form.

    You should define data selection on the Data Selection form to enhance system performance even if you defined data selection for each smart field.

11. On the Additional Properties form, select the appropriate options and click Next.

    The options that appears on this form are defined on the Properties tab of the Report Director Template.

12. On the Finish form, click Finish.

13. Save and preview the report.