Reports Pt 1

Introduction – 00:00

Hey guys, welcome to the Freezerworks 2019 Learning Series, your visual guide to our sample management software. Today, we begin our look at reporting in Freezerworks. I don't think I need to tell you how essential reports are on a daily basis. With Freezerworks, you can create reports that display whatever information and branding that you require, much like a samples entry form. The basics of configuring a report can be a bit complicated, so if you need more assistance after this video, be sure to check out our User's Guide.

So, to start creating reports, open the Configuration menu and select Data Entry and Display. On the mini-menu, select Reports. The User Defined Reports list view is split into two list boxes – My Reports and All Available Reports. The All Available Reports list will contain every report in the system that is assigned to your Group, while the My Reports list contains every report you personally created, by default. If you want a report in the All Available Reports list added to My Reports, highlight it and click Add. If you want to remove a report from the My Reports list, highlight it and click Remove. No matter what though, if a report format is assigned to your Group, you'll be able to print it. 

Report Type and Sections – 01:40

To create a new report, click Add New. Start by giving your Report a name, and provide a Description if you'd like. The next step is to determine what kind of report you want to create – which data table you want this to report on. The Report Type dropdown contains every data table in your edition of Freezerworks. The Report Type you select will determine what Sections you are allowed to have on the report, what sections need to be on the report, and the type of list views you can print the report from (listed here). For instance, selecting a Samples report type means the Samples section becomes checked on and locked, as the section is required. If I select an Aliquots report type though, the Samples checkbox disappears altogether, as that section cannot appear on an Aliquots report. If you want more data tables appearing on your report than the type ensures, check on the desired Section checkboxes. These steps are very important, as the Report Type dropdown cannot be changed after you click Done on the overlay, and the report sections determine what fields can appear on the report. Of course, you can always start over if you make a mistake, or simply make a new report later. I'm going to create a Samples report with Aliquots and Transactions sections as well.

Report Configuration Area – 02:57

Click Done, and you'll arrive at the Report format configuration form. The left side is the actual report area, while the right side functions as your palette, where you drag fields from, create objects, or add text and pictures. Let's start by looking at how the report configuration area functions. You'll see the area divided into different sections. On every report, no matter what sections you turned on, you'll have a Report Header, a Page Header, a Total, a Page Footer, and a Report Footer. Whatever you place in the Report Header section will appear at the top of the report, and whatever's in the Page Header will appear at the top of every page of the report. The Footers function in the opposite way: Report Footer is at the very end of the report and the Page Footer appears at the end of every page. The Total section is where you can place Summary Data fields, like counts, as this section appears after all of the inventory data has.

Speaking of, let's discuss the inventory-related sections we checked on at the beginning. For every box you check on at the start, a corresponding header, body, and footer section will appear in the report configuration area. Each section will display every record in their respective table that is related to what you want reported. The records themselves will appear in the body sections; these are the ones not followed by the words Header or Footer. The Headers and Footers will appear before and after each record in their section appears. For this reason, how you add fields to the report will be important later. For now, remember that if you don't need a particular section on the report you can always drag the line below the undesired section upwards until the section isn't visible. In this way, all the sections are resizable as well as removable.

Adding Fields – 04:28

Now, let's discuss how adding fields to the report works. As you can see, the fields are separated into their respective inventory tables, like many other places in the program. If you want to add a Samples field, click the Samples button; if you want an Aliquots field, click the Aliquots button. We've also included a General button, which contains count fields for every inventory table as well as general fields that would be useful on any report (such as Page Number and Report Date). Let's go ahead and add Page Number to the Page Footer area, by clicking and dragging the field. When you add a field to the form, two objects will appear. One of them is the field heading – in this case, the words “Page Number.”  The other object is the actual data for the field. When thinking about the field, Page Number, we probably just want the number at the bottom of every page, so we'd delete the heading object. Knowing the difference between Field Headings and the actual data objects is very important when adding inventory fields. When I add Samples fields, I want the headings to appear in the Samples Header, while the actual data objects appear in the Samples section. This is simple enough, but if you start adding Aliquots Fields to a Samples Report like so, you don't necessarily want the Aliquots field headings in the Aliquots Header. The Aliquots header will appear every time the report lists an Aliquot, which can be numerous when printing a report for Samples. To limit the length of your report, you'll want to place most Child field headings in their Parent section. So, I'll place my Aliquot field headings in the main Samples section, below any Samples fields. To keep yourself from making a mistake, you may wish to just shrink the child Headers. For my Transaction fields, I'll keep both the heading and data objects in the Transaction body section, as I don't expect too many, and they'll appear right after their Aliquots.

Palette Tools – 06:15

Now, let's discuss the various palette tools, such as the Text tool, which you can use to give your report a title or anything else you can imagine. Be sure to use the object properties to increase the size and/or change the style of your text. There's also the line, rectangle, and circle tools, which can help you organize your data. For example, I'll use a bunch of rectangles and opacity settings to color code the data on my report, so I can quickly differentiate between Sample, Aliquot, and Transaction data. I'll even use the Send to Back button to make sure the boxes are behind the data. Back on the palette, we have the picture tool, which you can use to add a logo to your report, or any other piece of branding. Finally, if you're having a hard time getting fields to line up nicely on the report, try out the alignment and distribute options to automatically organize objects with each other.

Since my report's pretty much done, here's an example of what it looks like printed. Any white space can be removed by collapsing unused sections, like Page Header, and shrinking down occupied sections so just their objects fit. The last thing I should mention before finishing the report is that you have the ability to add specific sorts and subtotals to each data table represented on the report. Do this by opening the Report Properties menu and selecting Sorts. For help using this screen, see our User's Guide or contact our Support Staff. Now, I'll save the report, assign it to my Groups, and we're ready for the next video.

Conclusion – 08:26

There's plenty of stuff I couldn't get to today, so see our User's Guide for all there is to know about configuring reports. Thanks as always for watching, and we'll see you next time!