Planning a Layout

Before you begin to define a layout online, you should do some planning and outlining on paper so you fully understand what data you want to retrieve, what you want the resulting reports to look like, and so on. The following checklist is a good way to make sure that you cover all bases before you start defining a layout.

• Outline your report specifications on paper, showing the desired rows, columns, and headings.

• Examine existing layouts and copy them, if possible, instead of starting from scratch.

• Determine the naming convention for your layout, scope, report request, and instances.

• Determine at which levels (worksheet, column, row, or cell) you should specify the queries and ledgers, fields, and labels you want to use as your criteria.

• Identify existing PeopleSoft queries that might support your query criteria. If they don’t exist, you’ll have to create them. Do you want to use TimeSpans?

• Identify existing PeopleSoft trees that might support your field criteria, because it’s simpler to use tree nodes than to specify detail values as your field criteria. Do you want to use nPlosion?