Adding Report Elements

Reports may have the following elements:

Text

This element represents static text or a mixture of static text and dynamic text (or tag expressions) (see Reports). To add a text element:

  1. Click on the “text” icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the text or click anywhere in the Design Area to get the rectangle of the default size.
  3. The text dialog will be displayed. Enter the text into the dialog. To include a tag expression, enter tag symbols explicitly. For example:
    Name is: <<Account.Name>>

Tag Expressions

Tag Expressions or Dynamic Text are explained in the Document Generation section. To add a tag expression element:

  1. Click on the “dynamic text” icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the tag element or click anywhere in the Design Area to get the rectangle of the default size.
  3. The text dialog will be displayed. Enter the text of the tag expression into the dialog (do not include tag symbols). You can press F3 or F4 at any time to bring up the Context Assistant.
  4. Click OK on the dialog to complete the dynamic text element. Note that the contents of the element will be validated at this point and if there is a problem an error message will be shown.

note

Aggregate operations, such as SUM, MAX, MIN etc when used inside tags in a report are calculated depending on whether they use conditions or not. Aggregate operations that do not use conditions operate only on objects iterated over in the report, whereas aggregate operations using conditions operate on all objects in the system. For example, if a report prints out all accounts with balance greater than 1000, the expression ‹‹SUM Account.Balance›› will calculate the total balance of these accounts, whereas the expression 
<<SUM Account.Balance WHERE Account.Balance > 500>>

will calculate the total balance of the accounts that are greater than 500 (even though the report only works with the accounts greater than 1000).

Rectangle

An element represents a rectangle. To add a rectangle element:

  1. Click on the Rectangle icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area or click to get the default size

Circle

An element represents a circle. To add a circle element:

  1. Click on the Circle icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a circle in the appropriate band in the Design Area or click to get the default size.

Line

An element represents a straight line. To add a line element:

  1. Click on the Line icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the design area.
  2. Draw a line in the appropriate band in the Design Area. Use the Shift key to constrain line horizontally, use the Ctrl key to constrain the line vertically

Image

An element represents an image. To add an image element:

  1. Click on the image icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Click on the spot in the appropriate band in the Design Area where the top left corner of the new image will be. The Report Designer will display the File Selection Dialog.
  3. Select the file representing an image (must be a .gif or .jpeg format) and press OK. The new image element will be displayed in the Design Area.

Subreport

This element represents a report that is embedded into some other report. To add a subreport:

  1. Click on the subreport icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the subreport. The Report Designer will display the Subreport Settings dialog.
  3. Specify the properties of the subreport as described in Editing Subreport Element and click OK. The new subreportelement will be displayed in the Design Area.

Table

This element represents a table. Quite often tables can be used instead of subreports to show related records (such as line items of an order, for example) in a tabular fashion. To add a table:

  1. Click on the table icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the table. The Report Designer will display the Table dialog.
  3. Specify the properties of the table as described in Editing Table]] section and click OK. The new table element will be displayed in the Design Area.

Barcode

This element represents a barcode.To add a barcode:

  1. Click on the the Barcode icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the barcode. The Report Designer will display the Barcode dialog.
  3. Select the type of the barcode and specify an expression that contains the code (a textual string) of the barcode, for example: ‹‹Package.Code››

QRCode

This element represents a QRCode element.To add a QRCode:

  1. Click on the QRCode icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the QRCode. The Report Designer will display the QRCode dialog.
  3. Specify an expression that contains the code (a textual string) of the QRCode, for example: ‹‹Package.Code››

Conditional Element

A conditional element may be represented by any number of previously mentioned elements. A conditional element includes rules that define under which circumstances a particular sub-element will be included into the resulting document (see Reports). To add a new conditional element:

  1. Click on the “conditional element” icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the conditional element. The Report Designer will display the Conditional Element dialog.
  3. Specify the properties of the conditional element as described in the Editing Conditional Element section and click OK. The new conditional element will be displayed in the Design Area.

Chart Element

To add a chart element, do the following:

  1. Click on the “chart: icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Draw a rectangle in the appropriate band in the Design Area that will define the area occupied by the chart element. The Report Designer will start the Chart Wizard that will help you design a chart. See the Working with Charts section for more details.

Page Break Element

When you insert a Page Break element AwareIM will start a new page at the spot where the break is inserted. To insert a Page Break element:

  1. Click on the subreport icon in the left menu or drag and drop it on the Design Area.
  2. Click on the spot in the Design Area where you want the new page to start.