1. General

In the General Sub Tab you’ll find the basic options for your report. These options are very important to how the report will work. First you’ll see two fields:

• Report Name: The name you want your report to have
• Description: A simple description of your report.

Once you fill these fields out you’ll notice a box with the label “Tabs” that is surrounded with a few different buttons.

This field allows you to select what “Tabs” (data modules) you want to pull data from on your report. In some cases you will only pull data from one “tab”, but in other cases you will want to pull from more than one. That’s why this field allows you to select multiple “tabs”, rather than just one.

• To add a “tab”, click the Add button below the box. This will bring up a window labeled Tab Details.
• The Tab Details popup box has several fields as described below.
  • Tab:  A drop-down list of all the tabs available to you so you can pick which tab to select.
  • Filter:  The New Filter button allows you to create a filter to decide what data you want pulled in. If you want all the data from a tab, don’t use a filter (most reports use filters).
  • Outer Join:  This field is useful when you’re going to include more than one tab in your report. If it’s left checked, Ivinex will return all the records from the first “tab” you add, whether or not it finds a match in the second “tab” you add. If you un-check it then Ivinex will only return records from the first and second “tabs” if there is a match.
  • Link Type:  There are several different link types within Ivinex. Generally we want to include all link types here, but in special cases, you may only want to include a certain kind of link type.

Once you have all these fields set the way you want click the Update button to save the tab to the report.

You can add as many “tabs” as you want to this report using the method described above. Once you’re happy with the “General” Sub Tab it’s a good idea to go ahead and click the Save button at the bottom of the report details.

Note: The order in which you have your data modules in the report builder tool is important (top to bottom). Link Type and Outer Join are also important and can drastically change the way your report data is returned. The report builder is essentially a database query builder where you ask Ivinex for data (possibly from different database tables) using filters and such to control what data is returned.

Example Report “Query” using plain language:  Let’s say we have an accounts module and a contacts module. We want to create a report where we can see all contacts that are linked to an account.  We choose the contacts module first (no filter) (outer join checked) and then the accounts module second with the outer join unchecked and the type set to related.

After setting up our columns (read more about this below), this report will show all contacts with a related account.

Report Example 1

Let’s run the same report where all the setting are the same except the accounts module has the outer join checked. This time the report is showing all contacts with or without a related account.

Report Example 2

Now let’s reorder the modules so that the accounts module is above the contacts module and we get all accounts with or without a related contact.

Report Example 3

As you can see, the order of the data modules and whether or not you are using the outer join check box can significantly change how your report is displayed.

Note: This is just an example of a report to demonstrate how data module order and some of the different settings can change how reports are displayed. Results may vary based on your Ivinex data and the settings you use when creating reports.