Creating a Report type form

The Report type of form is designed to make it possible for you to create your own custom report forms that you can then use to generate your custom reports. Create the report form using the New Form Wizard.

To create a custom report form:

In Design Mode, launch the New Form Wizard.
On the first page of the wizard, select the Create a new form option and then click Next.
On the next page, complete these required fields:
- In the Name field, perform one of these actions:
  - From the drop-down list, select the name of an existing form to use as the basis for the new form.
  - Type a unique name for the new form.
    Form names must be unique.
- From the Form Type drop-down list, select Report.
- From the Data Source drop-down list, select an IDO to use as the primary collection.
Optionally, specify a default Device Type and any comments.

Comments are stored with the form definition and do not appear anywhere on the actual form.

Note: The Form Layout setting has no effect on a Report type form.
Click Next.
In the next page of the wizard (Select Properties), specify the properties of the IDO that are to be used in the report generated by the new form.
In the next page of the wizard (Properties), optionally specify:
- The order in which the properties are displayed
- The captions for properties/components
- What component class, if any, is to be applied to each property/component, along with any parameters to be passed
Click Next.

WinStudio displays the Select Regions page of the wizard. Use this page to specify the various regions to include on the resulting report form (template).
In the Select Regions section, select which "boilerplate" regions to include in the report form.
In the Set Orientation section, specify whether to use a Portrait orientation or a Landscape orientation for the report form and its published output.
Optionally, in the Select Group Properties section, select which properties to use to group returns.

For example, suppose you want to group a report on Quarterly Sales by Salesperson. You would select the Salesperson property in this section, and the system would then group the sales figures by salesperson.

You can select multiple properties to group by. If you do, the system processes the data in the order in which you list them here. To change the order, use the up and down arrows.

As with other property selection sections, the right panel indicates which properties are to be included.
Click Next.
Optionally, to create a template from the new form, select the Save Template option.
Click Finish.
WinStudio then creates the form and displays a rough-draft version in Design Mode.
Use Design Mode to finish crafting your report form.

You can now modify and customize all regions of your report, replace the corporate logo image with one of your own, and so on. Because the Report type of form is based on the FlexLayout component type, you should be familiar with that component type before attempting to modify your report form.

In addition, you can employ secondary collections and set the hierarchies between them (and the primary collection). To set those hierarchies, use the Parent Collection property on the Collections property sheet.