Report Generator lets nominated users customise and re-run reports they have access to. If a report is also enabled for Report Subscription, the generated report can be scheduled for update reruns and emailed to select recipients on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Report design notes
- The Report Generator and Report Scheduling features must first be enabled for your website by Commerce Vision.
- Report design is an Admin level function. Therefore, Admin Users determine the search by, grouping and sorting features of a report, whether it can be subscribed to, and have access to the Report Generator Widget, where they can edit field names and text displayed in the Report Generator screen. You can also consult with Commerce Vision for your reporting needs.
Step-by-step guide
A User can only generate and subscribe to a report if they belong to the report user group nominated for the report when it was designed.
1. Enable Scheduled Reporting
Scheduled Reporting can be enabled by administrators. It can be active globally or only to specific roles or users. To enable this feature:
- Navigate to Settings → System
- Enable Scheduled Reporting and click Configure.
- In the 'Scheduled Reporting Features Settings' screen, if running reports will be active for all users, toggle on Enable Report Generator. This will turn on the Report Generator feature for all users. If this feature is to be active only for certain roles or users, use overrides to limit access.
- (Optional) Toggle on Enable Report Subscription to allow users to schedule report updates to be emailed to themselves and/or other selected users. (See Subscribe to a report.) This option can be disabled but its use requires Report Generator to be active.
- Once 'Enable Report Generator' is enabled, the Run Reports menu item is available in the Reporting menu globally or for the set of CMS Roles and/or Users. Run Reports provides users with system and user reports to which they have been granted access.
2. Generate a report
Users can only generate (run) reports they have access to. Such reports are available through the Run Reports menu in CMS or the Report Generator as a Dashboard item on your website.
To generate a report:
- Log in to your website and click Dashboard.
- On your Dashboard, scroll down to the 'My Pages' section and click Report Generator.
- By default, the Reports list displays all active reports you have access to. Find the report you wish to generate. You can search by name or scroll down the list. If you want to find an inactive report or view all reports in the system, tick the 'Show Inactive Reports' checkbox and click the Search button.
- For the selected report, click the Edit Selection Report Criteria button. The Report Selection Criteria section is displayed.
- In Report Name, edit the name so it is more meaningful for your purposes. Note - a generated report can only be edited and managed by the user who generated it.
- The Search section contains the report's fields. Note - The availability of 'Search', 'Group By' and 'Sort By' for customisation will be different for each report, depending on how it has been designed. If options are available, select preferences as you require.
- To generate the report, click the Generate button. The report will be downloaded to your computer as a CSV file unless the PDF option has been set up for your website.
- Open the file to view it.
- (optional) If available, once the report is generated, the Subscribe button appears. If you want to schedule for report updates to be emailed to you or other users on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, click Subscribe. See Report Subscription help for details.
- If you did not select to subscribe (Step 9), click Close when you have finished with the 'Report Generator' facility.
