Session Objective
The purpose of this session is to guide you through the process of building an advanced report in the reporting module in GEMS.
While the report we’ll be working on today may not directly apply to your specific needs, the goal is to equip you with the essential skills to confidently create and customize your own reports moving forward.
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
Create, name, and organize a new report.
Select and input the appropriate data for your report.
Understand the structure of a report and how to arrange its sections effectively.
Apply formatting techniques to improve clarity and presentation.
Schedule a report.
Task 1- Choosing the Right Data for Your Report
In this scenario we will create a report called Register of Directors. We want to pull data from the following fields.
Screen> Field
Business Entity Basics> Jurisdiction
Business Entity Basics> Formation Date
Business Entity Basics> Entity Status
Business Entity Basics> Entity Type
Add data objects
Select the appropriate Data Objects, which correspond to the screens where the data required for your report is stored.
2. Once all Data Objects have been selected, click Okay.
Task 2- Customise the Report Layout
Add fields to the report
1. The Report layout designer will appear. Select the cell you wish to populate.
2. Click the arrow next to the Data Object that contains the field you want to add to the selected cell. This will expand the list of available fields within that screen.
3. Find the field you wish to include in your report and click the arrow to move it across to the cell you selected. In this scenario, we have moved the field Jurisdiction to cell A5.
Task 3- Add a Business Entity. Names Repeating Groups Section
Report Headers, Page Headers, Page Footers and Report Footers
These are categorized as static because they do not repeat according to the data in the report. These sections are best used for reporting metadata. They can also be useful for boilerplate elements, such as logos, copyright notices, titles or disclaimers.
Details
The rows in the Detail section repeat for each data row retrieved from the Data Object.
Repeating Groups
These are a way to organize and display data that contain multiple one-to-many relationships. Each repeating group has data from "many" categories, grouped by the "one" category.
In our scenario, we want Director details to repeat for each company.
Add a Repeating Groups Section
Click the Sort button. To add a repeating groups section you must first add a Sort for the relevant field.
2. Select the field that the "many" data has a relationship with and move across by clicking the arrow next to the sort field. In this scenario, all the fields we will add will have a relationship with the Business Entity Basics. Name.
3. Click Okay.
4. Add a new Repeating Groups Section. Click Add Section> Repeating Group> Business Entity Basics. Name
5. Once the new section has been added you can enter headers and field information.
It should start to look a bit like this...
Task 4- Format the Report
Can you...
Common Formulas
You might even want to add in a formula?
Today's Date | =Today() |
Page Footer/Page Number | =PageNumber() |
Task 5- Schedule the Report
If you create a report that needs to be run regularly, you can schedule reports to be run and sent out via email.
Have a go at scheduling your report
Find the report, click Menu> Schedule Report.
2. Work your way through the section Recurrence, Filters and Recipients.
Challenge!
Practice editing pre-existing reports to suit your needs. You can use all of the skills you learnt in this session to help you.
First you should find a report that is similar to your requirements, then duplicate the report.
In the example below we will duplicate the Entities with Missing Information report. This is a great report for checking the quality of your data in GEMS particularly if certain data fields are required for legal or compliance reasons.
Click the Menu button next to the report you wish to duplicate.
Click Duplicate.
3. Change the name of your report. In this scenario, we will change our report name to CORE EXAMPLE Entities with Missing Information.
4. Click on the folder you wish to store your report. In this scenario, we will store our new report in the folder CORE 2025.
5. Click Okay.
6. Find the duplicate report and click the Menu button.
7. Click Edit.
You can now edit the report using the skills we learnt throughout the session, this method of duplicating a similar report is often considered a much faster way of producing reports that meet your specific needs.
