The Web Report Designer allows you to create a number of reports and print templates to be used with data from your Method account.
In this series, you will go through multiple lessons which will display the basics of creating a report in the Web Report Designer.
This will be done in a linear fashion, so you should read the articles one after another. Once complete, you will have a basic understanding on how the Web Report Designer works.
This article is for the online Web Report Designer accessible from the web. If you are using the older, Windows-based Report Design, please refer to this section of the help center.
Lesson 1 - Create a New Report Based on the Contacts Table
Follow the steps in the article "Create a New Report".
When you create the new report, fill in these details:
Name: Give the report a name. You can enter "Contacts List"
Description: Reminds others and yourself what the report does.
Base Table: Every report is based on a table. Here, select the Contacts table.
Detail tables: None need to be added. (For more information on detail tables, see Create a New Report.)
Click Launch Builder.
This will take you to the Design View for your new report!
Show Contacts in Report
Let's create our first report. It will be very plain, but it will list out the contacts in our Method account.
On the right, select the database symbol to show the field list.
In order to see the fields for your contacts table, first select the arrow beside the line with your Method Account name, and then select the arrow beside the Contacts table line.
From the fields listed under Contacts, drag the Name field into the Detail1 band.
Click the Preview button in the top main toolbar.
This will show you your report. It will list out the contact names in your Contacts table.
6. Click the Designer button to return back to the Designer view.
Click the Save button to save your work.
The Detail1 Band
Let's explain why the contact names looks as it does.
The report lists all of the records from the base table chosen for the report, the Contacts table.
The Detail1 band defines how each record looks in the report. The Detail1 band had a lot of whitespace above and below the field name:
This means for each contact that is listed in the report, it too will have a lot of whitespace above and below the displayed field name:
The Detail1 band acts as a template for each row in the table. By styling it, you can change the look of each row.
In the next article, we will look into how to style the report.