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Report Designer: Designing and Editing Reports
Report Designer: Designing and Editing Reports

The Report Designer is the main interface for designing and editing reports.

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Written by GoFormz Support
Updated over a week ago


The Report Designer is the main interface for designing and editing reports. You can access the Designer via the report creation flow, or by choosing to edit a report from the Reports Tab or Report Viewer.

The Designer consists of two areas — the Editor area on top is where you edit your report, and the Preview area underneath it shows what the report will look like.

A GoFormz report has 3 main components, and we go over each of these below.

  • Form Templates: The form template or templates on which you want to report. We review how to add or remove templates in your report.

  • Columns: The columns of the report, and the template fields to which they correspond. We go over how to add, move and delete columns.

  • Filters: The conditions that control which forms are included in the report. We go through how to create, edit and remove filters.

Form Templates

The form template or templates that you select for your report determine the data available for the report — the report will only contain data from forms completed based on the chosen template(s). Note that in order to report on more than two templates for a report, you must have the Enterprise Edition.

To add a form template to your report, click the + Template button at the bottom left of the report Editor area.

The Choose a template dropdown will appear. Open the dropdown to see all the templates in your account. Type in a keyword to narrow the dropdown list to just the templates that have that keyword in their name. Once you find your template in the dropdown, click to select it.


To remove a form template from your report, click the template’s name in the Editor and select Delete from the dropdown. The template will immediately be removed from the report.

You can also hide a template from the Preview. This will include forms based on that template in the report, but exclude them from the Preview panel. This can be useful when you are building a report from multiple templates — you may want to exclude all templates but one to make sure you are getting the right data from that template. To exclude a template from the Preview, click the template’s name in the Editor and select Hide from preview from the dropdown. To stop excluding the template from the Preview, click the template’s name again and select Show in preview from the dropdown.

Now that you know how to add/remove templates in a report, learn how to configure your report columns.

Columns

Each report column corresponds to a field in the template that the report is based on. By default, the column has the same name as its template field, but the column can be renamed. If your report spans multiple form templates, then you must select the appropriate field for each column from each template. For example, suppose you are building a report using the Incident Form and Injury Form templates. Then you might have a column called Date that uses the Incident Date field from the first form and the Injury Date column from the second form.

The report Editor shows all the columns in your report, along with the column name at the top and the corresponding fields from each template underneath. In the example below, the "Total Amount" column uses the "Total Cost" field from the Sample Work Order template and the "Total Expenses" field from the Expense Report - Starter template.

Adding and mapping columns

To add a column to your report, do the following, click the + Add Column button in the top right corner of the report Editor area. If you have a lot of columns in your report already, you may have to scroll right to see this button, as in the example below. A new column will appear in the report, with the name “Unnamed Column”. 

Next, you will want to do the following:

  • map template fields to your column;

  • rename the column;

  • optionally, sort the report on one or more columns;

  • reorder columns within your report

Click on the column name to see a menu with all of these options. We go over the details below.

To map a template field to your column, click the secondary dropdown underneath Selected Value, then do the following:

  • If you want this column to show template metadata, select the desired metadata field from the dropdown — e.g. Form Id, Created Date, etc.

  • If you want this column to show data from your forms, select Template Field.

If you have selected the “Template Field” option, you now have to select which template fields you want to show. This must be done for each of the templates in your report. To do this, expand the Select Field dropdown next to the first template in your report, and choose the desired field. You can start typing the field name to narrow the dropdown selection. Now do the same for each template in your report.

Naming, sorting, deleting and reordering columns

To rename a column, click the column's name to see its options dropdown, then click the text field with the column name and type in the new name.

To sort the report on a column, click the column's name and then expand the Sort dropdown. Here, select None, Sort Ascending or Sort Descending, depending on the type of sort you want to apply for this column. Note that sorting is available in the Enterprise Edition only.

To delete the column, choose the Delete column option.

To reorder columns in your report, click the Order Columns link at the top to launch the Order Columns window. In this window, simply drag and drop column names to change their order. Your changes will be reflected in the Report Preview immediately. Or if you just want to move a column one spot to the left or right within your report, click the column's name, and use the Move Left and Move Right options in the dropdown.

Now that you have configured the report's columns, you are ready to set some filters.

Filters

Filters are the conditions that control which forms are included in the report. These conditions can be based on form metadata as well as template fields. For instance, you can filter your report to contain only forms that were created after a certain date, only forms where the technician's name is Brent, etc. Note that filtering on template fields is available in the Enterprise Edition only; filtering on metadata fields is available for all reports.

To create, edit or remove a filter, click the funnel-shaped Filter button at the top right of the Report Designer. You will see a panel containing all your existing filters.

  • To add a new filter, simply click the + Add Filter button in the lower left of the panel. A new row will be added. In this row, select the column you want to filter on, an operator, and a value. See below for more details.

  • To remove a filter, click the X to the right of the filter row. It will immediately be removed.

  • To edit an existing filter, change the filter's column, operator and/or value. See below for more details.

A filter consists of three components: a column, an operator, and a value. In the example above, the column is "Completed Date", the operator is "Is within" and the value is "Last Month". This will filter your report to contain only forms that were completed within the last month. Likewise, the second filter means that your report will contain only forms where the "Customer" field is "Acme".

Note: Metadata Fields date fields will ALWAYS be formatted in and use UTC standard time. For Enterprise accounts with the ability to filter using date/time Template Fields, filtering will be based on your local timezone settings.

You can filter your report on any metadata column, but different columns will have different filter options depending on the field types of the form fields it contains. We go over the possibilities below.

Common filters across all columns
All column types can have the operators Is empty and Is not empty. These operators do not have a value, they simply filter on whether the field has been filled in it or not. In the example below, we filter on all forms where the Reported Problem field Is not empty.

Filters: Text columns
Text columns can have operators Is and Is not. The value is a string that you type in. In the example below, we filter on forms where the Technician's name Is Brent. Text columns include columns derived from fields of the following types: Text, Checkbox Group, Drop Down, Database, Barcode, Auto Number. They also include all metadata columns that aren't dates.

Filters: Number columns
Number columns can have the operators Equals, Does not equal, Is less than and Is greater than. The value is a number that you type in. In the example below, we filter on forms where the Total Cost Is Greater Than $1000. Number columns are columns derived from fields of type Number.

Filters: Checkbox columns
Checkbox columns can have the operators Is and Is Not. The value is a checkbox that can be checked or left unchecked. In the example below, we filter on forms where the Hot Work field is checked. Checkbox columns are columns derived from fields of type Checkbox.

Filters: Date columns
Date columns can have the following operators:

  • Is, Is before, Is after: With these operators, the values are Today, Yesterday and Pick a Date. When choosing the latter, you will be prompted to select a date on a calendar.

  • Is within: With this operator, the values are Last 7 Days, Last 14 Days, Last X Days, This Week, This Month, This Year and Pick a Date Range. When choosing the latter, you will be prompted to select a date range on a calendar.

In the example below, we filter on forms that were Created before May 1, 2019 and were Completed within This Week.

Note: Metadata Fields date fields will ALWAYS be formatted in and use UTC standard time. For Enterprise accounts with the ability to filter using date/time Template Fields, filtering will be based on your local timezone settings.

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