I wrote about these two reports back in a post labeled SalesLogix Ticket Reports (Part 2) written on January 29, 2009. Follow this link to read the original post. I looked at the updated version of the reports and still agree that these reports are very well written. The idea came to me that one way of improving the concept of these reports would be combine them into one report. So that is what I will do today.
This is real easy to do, the first thing we are going to do is save each of these reports to make them accessible. To get the report out of SalesLogix (SLX) you need to have access to a machine with the SLX Architect and Business Objects Crystal Reports installed. You will need your SLX Admin Password from your Administrator.
First thing to do is log into into the SLX Architect. Close the Open Project window that first opens and open the Manage Crystal Reports view via the Manage/Reports menu item. Highlight the Support Follow-up Statistics by Assigned – Sample report under the Ticket family and select the Check Out icon using the tool bar icon on the top of the view. Then select the Launch Crystal Report System icon on the tool bar located all the way to the right. Go to Crystal File Menu, and select “Save As…” from the menu that appears and save the report to your desk top as Assigned-By. Repeat the process for the Support Follow-up Statistics by Received – Sample report. After following the process, select CTRL R to get the report running in preview mode. Again, select the Crystal File Menu, this time select “New” from the list that appears and then Blank Report from the next list. The Crystal Report Wizard will open and I just selected OK to close it.
To prepare for adding in the sub reports we will need to add another Details section, right click on the Details along the left side of the report and select “Insert Section Below” from the list that appears. You will see Details b appear, open both section (Details a and b) up to allow space for sub reports. We will not need the Report Footer so left click on that Header and select Suppress from the list.
We are ready for the sub report to be added. Click on the Crystal Insert Menu and select “Subreport…” from the list that appears. When the Insert Subreport interface opens select the first choice of “Choose an existing report”. When the field activates, Browse out and find one of the sub report you saved earlier. There will be no links to this subreport for now so we can select OK on the bottom of the interface. Immediately you will see a light orange block has attached itself to your cursor, place the subreport in section “Details a”. Follow the same process for other report and add it to section “Details b”. From here on it is alignments and adjustments to the report to fit your fancy.
Currently all of the tickets in the system are coming into this report so I thought it would be nice to add a something to limit the number of records entering the report. Usually I would throw in a user defined parameter but today I am going to use the Aged0To30Days function in Crystal. I added the following formula to each of sub reports Record Selection Formula:
{TICKET.RECEIVEDDATE}in Aged0To30Days
The outcome worked as expected and the report is currently only bringing in records from the last 30 days. You can play around with other functions to get this report to work the way you want but I will post as described here for download. I would be interested to here your ideas on how you controlled the data coming into the report. Here is a picture of my finished report.
Download the updated Report here.
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More on Thursday – Thanks for reading. Geo
