Quick Report is a flexible and fast way to create simplified reports in and should be used as a complement to more complex reports built with the Report Builder.
Quick Reports and Quick Reports Categories are managed in the
Quick Reports window. Use this feature to create,
import or modify Quick Reports.
Navigate to Solution Manager/Administration/Quick Report Categories
The Quick Reports feature (Titled "List Quick Reports") gives you an overview of all reports and it can be quite useful when you have larger number of reports. From this feature you can navigate to the Quick Report Detail feature with the right mouse menu option "View Details".
| Column | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Shows the Quick report category. All Quick reports must have a category. If the Quick Report doesn’t have any category assigned, the default category, ”Default”, will be used. If the supplied Report Category doesn’t exist, it will be created, with protection private as default. | |
| Report Title | The name of the Quick Report. This name must be unique, two reports with the same name are not allowed. | |
| Type | Shows the type of Quick Report.
When defining new quick reports you must select the appropriate type. Note: MS Report, Dashboard and Web report is only available if you have the Business Intelligence Extension installed. |
|
| SQL Expression | The SQL expression that is the source to the report. By double clicking on the field an edit-dialog will become available and the SQL-expression is more easily edited. | |
| Report Reference | Specifies a reference to a report. This will be
different things depending on the Quick Report Type. Note: MS Report, Dashboard and Web report is only available if you have the Business Intelligence Extension installed. |
|
| SQL Statement | Empty | |
| Crystal Reports | Crystal Report file name | |
| MS Report | MS Report Name | |
| Dashboard | Dashboard Name | |
| Web Report | URL for the report | |
| Comments | The comments that include important information about the Quick report. By double clicking on the field an edit-dialog will appear to make it easier to edit the comment. | |
| Presentation Object | The corresponding Presentation Object for this quick report. | |
All reports are grouped into Categories to help the user to find the reports easily and also for easy administration. You can create new Categories just by right-clicking on the node and select "Add Category".
In the Quick Report Categories (tree view) feature, to create a new report, right-click on the category where the report should be added and select Add Report. This can be achieved also from the List Quick Report Feature with standard operations.
Enter a name for the report and what type of report it is; SQL Statement or Crystal Report. If the type is a Crystal Report you should specify the file name to the report on disc. For SQL Statements you must add a SQL Expression. This SQL Expression should not contain any tables since end-users do not have the permission to query tables. You may also add any comments to the report in the comments field. Once you click on save the Quick Report is persisted but in order for end users to execute the report they must be granted the report. When saving the report a Presentation Object is created which corresponds to this report and shown in the Presentation Object field in the form. Thus in order to grant the privilege to execute this report you do this by granting the Presentation Object. Granting Presentation Objects are normally done in the Permission Set form but a convenient way is to right-click on the report in the tree and select Publish. This will grant the Report to all Permission Sets which are granted the Database Objects which the Report uses.
A report can also be added by importing a Quick Report from a SQL file. To do this in Quick Reports Categories (tree view) feature right-click on a Category and select "Import options". In the Quick Report detail feature, Import link label is used to perform the same operation. The imported Quick Report must also by granted to end user in order to be executed by end users in the same way as described above. The feature only applies on SQL Statement Type reports.
In SQL Quick reports, results are presented in a table window. When displaying the result, SQL column names/ aliases will be formatted to Camel case in order to make it more readable. In multi-part column names/aliases, ‘_’ (underscore) and space are considered as delimiters and the character following any of these will be capitalized.
Eg. order_number : Order Number
ORDER NUMBER: Order Number
In case you wish to skip this default formatting, you need to alias column names as follows.
Define the special character to be used as the alias identifier in the system parameter “SQL_ALIAS_ENCLOSER'”. (Example - ‘%’)
When defining the SQL statement for the report, provide the proper alias for required columns inside double quotes, enclosed by this special character.
When displaying the result, special character at the beginning and end of the alias will be removed. This special character itself can be used anywhere else in the alias.
i.e. Say you need to display CUSTOMER_ID column as “Customer ID”. Assuming ‘%’ is the alias identifier defined, and then the column name should be aliased as follows.
SELECT CUSTOMER_ID “%Customer ID%”, …
Eg. "%%CUSTOMER_ID%" --> %CUSTOMER_ID
"%CUSTOMER_ID" --> %customer Id
Any column that is not aliased in this way will be applied with default framework formatting.
Note: The Presentation Object will initially belong to component Base Server (FNDBAS). In the case of a Quick Report of type SQL-statement, the statement will be evaluated and the database objects used will be added to the Presentation Object. This evaluation will not take place when using Crystal Reports, MS Reports, Dashboards nor when the Quick Report is using IAL-views. Those types will require some manual security administration.
In the Quick Reports Categories (tree view) feature, to test the report click on the Preview tab and the report will be executed. The preview limits the number of objects returned to a maximum of 100. In the List Quick Report feature you need to use the right mouse option View Report and in Quick Report detail feature you have a Link label for this purpose. The feature only applies on SQL Statement Type reports.
A Quick Report may be exported to a SQL file. In the Quick Reports Categories (tree view) feature, right-click on the report in the tree and add select Export SQL Statement...option, in the Quick Report detail feature the Export SQL Statement link label is used to perform the same operation The exported SQL from the Quick Report can then be imported into another installation using the Import SQL Statement operation.
Export and Import of several Quick Reports of type Sql Statement can be done in the Quick Reports Overview window. Select one or more Quick Reports and use the Export... option in the right-click menu. Use the Import option in the same window to import the Quick Reports. Transferring a Quick report this way between environments will preserve the connection to the Presentation Object and Quick Report Category. If the Quick Report already exists a dialog shows up asking if you want to replace the existing Quick Report or not.
In order to preview Quick Reports of type Crystal, the reports to be previewed should be deployed in to a folder in the machine where the IFS Crystal Web Service is running. Create a folder in the machine where the IFS Crystal Web Service is running and copy the Crystal Report files (*.rpt file) that are going to be previewed from Web Client. This folder is referred to as the OpenReportPath. In the installation process this folder is configured in the Web.Config file found in the IIS virtual directory for the IFS Crystal Web Service.