How You Create and Edit Reports

Use reports to generate and print documents for internal operations, external business transactions, or legal requirements. To meet specific requirements, you must create or edit reports to capture different data, or present data in another way.

Report Components

Each report has components that you can modify, as described in this table:

Report Component	Description	Tool for Modifying
Data model	Defines the data source, data structure, and parameters for the report. Multiple reports can use the same data model. Each report has one data model.	Data model editor in the application
Layout	Defines the presentation, formatting, and visualizations of the data. A report can have multiple layouts. Different types of layout templates are available, for example Excel and RTF.	Depending on the template file type: XPT: Layout editor in the application RTF: Microsoft Word PDF: Adobe Acrobat Professional Excel: Microsoft Excel eText: Microsoft Word
Properties	Specifies formatting and other settings for the report.	Report editor in the application

Report Component

Description

Tool for Modifying

Data model

Defines the data source, data structure, and parameters for the report. Multiple reports can use the same data model. Each report has one data model.

Data model editor in the application

Layout

Defines the presentation, formatting, and visualizations of the data. A report can have multiple layouts. Different types of layout templates are available, for example Excel and RTF.

Depending on the template file type:

XPT: Layout editor in the application
RTF: Microsoft Word
PDF: Adobe Acrobat Professional
Excel: Microsoft Excel
eText: Microsoft Word

Properties

Specifies formatting and other settings for the report.

Report editor in the application

What You Can Create or Edit

This table gives just a few examples of creating or editing reports.

Task	Example
Edit the layout of a report.	Add your company logo to the report output.
Add a new layout to a report.	Design a new layout template that provides less detail than the existing template.
Edit a data model.	Add two fields to the data model used by a report so you can add those new fields to a layout for the report.
Create a new report based on a new data model.	Create a new data model based on data from an external system, and create reports using the data model.