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Reporting


DRUDITSKY

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  • 1 month later...

I have encountered similar/additional problems with the reports. I have not done extensive testing of the reports, but only one of the reports I have tried hasn't failed in one way or another. I also have some suggestions for improving the usability of the reports.

1. This is not a bug, but rather a usability suggestion. I wanted to run a report for the items in a single room, like Druditsky, so I first selected the room in the location list and then went to the reporting menu and ran the Items Grouped by Category report. I expected to get only the items from the room I selected, but instead I got all items. Only later when I figured out how to run a report for a single location and compared it to the original report did I figure out that the title on the report with all the items clearly states "All Assets" in the title. The issue is that it's not obvious when you run the reports from the main menu that they will include all items. Item 5 has my preferred suggestion, but if you don't adopt it, perhaps the menu titles on the main menu should include "All Items" or "All Assets" in them.

2. Another usability suggestion. On the Print Options dialog, it was not obvious to me that the printer selection was in support of the "Direct to" option of "Printer", since its change button was always available to me, even when I selected something like Adobe PDF Format in Direct to. I think that the "Direct to" drop down should be first in the list, and that the printer selected and its change button should be dimmed when the Direct to is not directed to the Printer (or Pinwriter (TTY)?). This would make it more obvious that the printer selection is in support of the Direct to Printer selection.

3. On the positive side, kudos to HomeManage for the extensive range of export formats. I am still trying to figure out which one will work best for my own purposes, but with such a choice I am confident that at least one will do the job.

4. When I ran the Items Grouped by Category report, the report is indeed grouped by Category, but the items are sorted by Description so the categories are not listed alphabetically and the category names repeat many times, each with only one or a few items in it. I thought maybe the report used the sort order in use on the displayed list of assets, so I sorted the list by Category. This had no effect on the report order.

5. For Druditsky's benefit, you are able to run a report for a location or room by right clicking on the location or room and running the report from the context menu. I admit it's not the easiest to discover; and I would have preferred to see some basic filtering capability on the Print Options dialog that displays when you run the report from the main menu. If that were implemented, then running the report from a Location, Category or View could open the same dialog with that chosen Location, Category or View pre-selected. In this way I think it would be more obvious to the user how to select items to include on the report.

6. That being said, the option to run the Assets Grouped by Category (sic - not Items as it is in the main reporting menu) report does not work from the Location context menu. I tried three other reports and they all opened the Print Options dialog, but Assets Grouped by Category does nothing; not even generate an error.

7. On the positive side, by selecting "Run Report Using..." from the context menu I was able to run the AssetsByCategory.lst report and it worked as expected.

8. I then ran the report Items Grouped by Location/Category from the main menu, so it included all items. That report appears to be sorted by Location, then Category, then Room, then Asset#, and the subtotals are triggered by Room, even though the room isn't one of the fields in the report. This creates a lot of unexpected subtotals. At a minimum, the report definition should be fixed so items are sorted by Location, then Category, then Description and subtotals should be triggered by Location/Category. I have better suggestion in the next item, though.

9. I would suggest that the user should be able to choose the sort order on the Print Options dialog which opens the report, with restrictions on the first one or two sort orders depending on the categorization defined by the report. Using the report by Location by Category as an example, I would like to see:

Sort Order Categorize Subtotal

Location X X

Category X X

Description

<choose a sort order>

I.e., I have chosen to sort by Location/Category/Description and to categorize and subtotal by Location and Category. I have not used the option for a fourth sort order, but the system will always add (the unique) AssetNumber as the final sort order to improve the repeatability of the report.

10. I see that there is a reporting module which I haven't tried, yet, but from the documentation it appears that it has this kind of capability described in item 9. I don't know if the pre-defined reports use this module for their definition, but I think maybe not since the report from the menu doesn't work correctly, while the report using AssetsByCategory.lst does work correctly. Admin, can you enlighten me? Can the sorting/subtotaling problems be easily fixed by editing/replacing some of the .lst files?

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  • 10 months later...
  • 9 months later...

Any Updates/fixes for the problems listed above?  These were mentioned quite a while back and seems to have never been addressed.

Any comments by the developer on the status of these reporting inconsistencies.

I haven't purchased yet as I am still testing and finding quite a few anomalies or things that are not real flexible, or I haven't found a way to change them.

Thanks...

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FYI: I have been able to get around the issues listed on this post by creating my own reports, queries and variables within the software, as is.  

The software provides the interfaces required to do most anything you want, if you need to deviate from what is provided.  For people who are not computer/database people and not wanting to drill down on customizing, I would still recommend the author address some of the issues on the some of the reports as they don't really output what one would expect.  Also, it would be nice to have reports that use, in addition to the 'Cost' field, 'Replacement cost' and 'current value' (or Estimated Value on the input form) for group and overall totals.  Seems these would more what one would want when communicating with their insurance company to assure correct $$$ coverage.

 

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