Setting Up Automatic Delivery of Custom Reports

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Follow these step-by-step instructions to prepare your custom reports for automatic delivery.

1. Open the Custom Reports Editor and Creator by clicking on the Reports | Custom Reports menu.

2. Select an existing report by clicking on the drop down button to the right of the QuickFind text box. Tabs 7 through 9 are used to setup automatic delivery options.

3. Click on the tab labeled "7. Output". Click on the New Option button; select the type of output (i.e. file format of the report). You have several choices:

Printer - paper

PDF - Adobe Acrobat portable document format. This format is the most readable. It will display your reports exactly as they appear when viewed in the RMS report viewer. Most computers have the Adobe Acrobat reader installed. If not, the reader is free and easily downloaded from the Internet.

RTF - Rich text format. Most word processors can open and read these reports. Most formatting will be preserved, but results may vary. A drawback to this option is that if a field has been set to a 0 width, it will still display in this format, which can make the reports hard to read. If you use this format, design the report accordingly (i.e. limit the number of fields so the report is readable).

HTML - Hyper text markup language. These may be displayed in a web browser. This format is useful if reports will be saved to a web server where links on a web site reference the files. These have a similar limitation to the RTF format.

Excel - Microsoft Excel format. Includes all formatting of the original report including page numbers.

Excel Native - Microsoft Excel format. It is called Native because most of the formatting is stripped so that the data is more easily worked with in Excel. Only one field may be summarized with this format. You may use up to 3 groups, but it is recommended to only use 1 for readability. The Excel subtotal feature is used for groups. Subtotals will be displayed on the top of a group. It is also recommended to not set the group fields to a size of 0 because this will force the user to expand the column width manually in order to be able to read the group header. It is also recommend to put the group fields at the beginning of the Fields Chosen list.

TIFF - Image format. Similar to a fax. It will display your reports exactly as they appear when viewed in the RMS report viewer, however, the quality will be fax-like. These are readable by most Windows-based computers without installing additional software.

Text - Plain text.

Comma Delim Text - Comma Delimited Text. All formatting and group headers and footers are stripped out. Only detail records are included. Each field is separated by a comma plus each field is surrounded by double-quotes just in case there is a comma within a field. See example below.

"PINEVILLE, NC","KEYX 633","Bad Order","3/3/2000 16:35","L","HOPEWELL, VA","NS","2813.8","",""

Most computer programs can easily recognize and import this format making it a good choice for sharing RMS data with other business systems or data warehouses.

If you wish to export the report to a computer / network folder, select the folder and filename in the File path and name text box. This is optional. If you are emailing a report, this is not required. Of course, you may do both if you wish. Select a File write option:

Overwrite - the file is written on top of any previous instances of the report.

New file with time stamp - the file is written with the name given but that includes a unique time stamp. This prevents any previous instances of the report from being overwritten.

You may create many (unlimited) output options for a single report.

4. Click on the tab labeled "8. Batch". Reports must be added to a batch in order to be scheduled to run automatically. Click on the New batch button and then type the name of the batch in the Name: text box. Select a report to add to the batch and click on the Add>> button. Click on the Save batch button. You have the option of running the batch from this form or you may go to the next tab/form to schedule the batch.

5. Click on the tab labeled "9. Schedule". Click on the Open Scheduler button. Click on the New button. Select Output Batch Reports from the Activity text box; choose the date and time for the first export; choose the Interval to determine how often to run this activity. Click the Save and Close button.