Overview

As a part of the process of creating paper-like management reports, it is useful to be able to add a report title at the top of a report.

Here is a video, or read below.

Fully formattable, these can be as simple or as complex as the user wishes and can be used to provide information that isn’t immediately obvious from the grid, for example a selected department.

Setting the Report Title

To configure a report title switch to the “Insert” tab and select Report Title…

which will display the Report Title dialog.

The dialog contains:

• a report title expression area that the user can type into

• a preview zone showing how it will look in the report

• an area at the bottom containing dynamic elements that can be added to the expression

• and some predefined samples for inspiration.

At its simplest the user can simply type the title they want to see into the expression and that is what they will get.

Eg:-        P&L for Board Meeting 22nd March 2020

But where a report is likely to be re-used month after month or where it could be run with different settings for different departments, the option to build something a bit more dynamic, is powerful.

Syntax

The dialog is very much designed to be point and click but those clicking actions do generate an expression which has a syntax which is useful to understand.

Specifically, anything inside curly braces is a parameter and anything outside is literal text.

Eg:-        My Report is called ‘{ReportName}’

Might produce “My Report is called ‘Management Balance Sheet’” where the report name has been injected into the title.

Parameters

To make navigation easier, parameters are grouped into separate sets, the simplest of which is the Report group, so we’ll start there.

Report Group

The Report group contains a list of simple parameters that have nothing to do with the actual design of the report.

• {Now} – the time and date that the report was run

• {Date} – the date that the report was run

• {User} – the name of the user running the report

• {ReportName} – the name of the report in the repository

• {ReportPath} – the location of the report in the repository (this can be very helpful if you have more than one report with the same name)

So just using these report group parameters a designer might create the following

Eg:         {ReportName} run by {CurrentUser} at {Now}

which might produce “Monthly Balance Sheet run by Daniel Graham at 09/02/2021 15:23”

Fields Group

The Fields Group gets a little more complicated.

It contains one entry for each field that is actively a part of the design of the report, that is to say, in the across or down axes OR has a filter selection set.

There are a variety of ways in which a user might want to see information about such a field, so each item provides a drop-down list of the various options along with the text (shown in italics) that the option will currently produce.

For example, the user may just want to display the name of the field:

Eg:-        Analysis by {Caption([Year])}

which would produce “Analysis by Fiscal Year”.

Or they might want a list of all the selected items for that field:

Eg:-        Analysis for {Caption(Filter([Year]))}

which might produce “Analysis for 2011, 2010 & Last Year Variance” where those three items are the selected items in the filter for the field.

Field Lists Group

Similar to the Fields Group, the Field Lists Group provides access to the fields by the area of the report they reside in.

It can provide lists of:

• AnyFiltered - All fields that have a filter setting

• DownAxis - All fields in the down axis

• AcrossAxis - All fields in the across axis

• OnGrid - All fields on the grid (ie: Down Axis + Across Axis)

• OffGrid - All fields not on the grid AND having a filter set

Again as there are a variety of ways that a user might want to see information about those groups, the drop-down provides a preview in italics, to help them chose. So..

Eg:-        Sales by {Caption(DownAxis)}

Might produce “Sales by Company, Department and Division”

Or

Eg:-        Company Results for {Caption(Filter(AcrossAxis))} by {Caption(DownAxis)}

              Might produce “Company Results for 2011 and Cumulative Period 12 by Company, Department, Division & Account”

Variables Group

The Variables group allows the user to place the value of a specific variable into the title.

The group gives access to all the variables defined in the report and a variety of ways of displaying them that again, can be previewed in the drop-down.

Eg:-        P&L for end {Caption([Period].[ThisMonth])}

Might produce “P&L for end Period 10”

Report Title Formatting

Report titles can be formatted using the palette button to the right of the preview area as shown above. Options cover all the usual formatting features ie: font, fill, alignment and borders.

A Note on Alignment

The alignment of the title also controls the alignment of the main grid in the event that the data doesn’t fill the width of screen available to FastClose. This is purely because it looks rather odd if the title is centred but the grid is left justified (say). So this one setting handles the alignment of both.

Exercises and Tutorial Survey

04.03 Report Title - Exercises.pdf

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