Custom Report Generator
The design goal of the MegaCall custom report interface was to serve the universal client demand of "give
me the report I want, in a familiar format, with all the data I want, and all from a single keystroke," and
to do so in a way that would not require programmer intervention every time the user wants to change something
in the report.
The result is a report generator, a report generation interface and a report viewer interface simple enough
for any user to run and view his reports, while maintaining the power and versatility to get the reports he needs.
Reports are newly run whenever requested, which means that the data is always up-to-date.
The Report Generator Interface
The report generator interface provides for progressive complexity; there are different levels of user knowledge
that can be applied to different report-related tasks. These levels, in order of relative complexity, are:
- The user selects and runs a report from a menu of twenty-five standard, pre-defined reports. (These reports
can be used as they are, modified, or copied and modified to create entirely new reports, as described below.)
- The user modifies the date range for the report by selecting from a list of pre-defined ranges. The custom
range allows a user to specify a start date and an end date, and on some reports includes a start and end time.
- The user modifies selection criteria (the criteria for which records will be included in the report). Selection
criteria include, but are not limited to: Account code, authorization code, billing run, call address (destination),
call class, call flags, call period (day rate, etc.), carrier, charge, city, cost, customer, customer status, customer
class, day of call (Monday, Tuesday, etc.), dialing plan, duration, organization, service, site, state, station,
time of call, transaction class, trunk, and trunk group.
- The user customizes various features of the report, such as its type (summary, detail, frequency or most/least),
the columns to be used and their relative positions, etc.
- The user modifies an existing report and saves the changes to an existing report or to a completely new report
on the report menu.
- The user directly edits the report definition file for advanced features not directly changeable through the
user interface described so far.
Customizing Reports
Some of the customizations possible include:
- Changes in a report to include or exclude data from different tables, such as calls, transactions or stations.
- Changes to the report's type from one format to another: detail, summary, most/ least or frequency.
- Modifications to a report's title or subtitle.
- Alterations to a report's width and its column contents and layout.
- Modifications to a report's sort order, including the sort action, the field, display width and title of each
column. Possible sort actions include: No detail (hidden), footer only, header only, header and footer (standard),
forced page break and forced merge break (used to merge multiple reports into a single run).
- Report summaries, including the summary field or function, the display width and the title of each summary
- Special report features, including cross tabulation, summary subtotals, zoom specifications and special parameters
that apply only to most/least and/or frequency reports.
The Report Viewer Interface
Reports generated interactively (not scheduled reports) are sent to a report viewer that starts displaying the
report the moment the first few pages are ready. The report viewer can display reports that are both longer and
wider than the screen and provides the following features for manipulating a viewed report:
- Movement - column right and left, line up and down, page up and down, report up and down (a forced page break
is treated as a new report), and a text search function for locating text strings are available.
- Printing - reports can be sent to a user's default printer, to any of a list of authorized printers or to a
file in ASCII delimited format.
- Modifications - the current report definition can be modified by reactivating the report generator screens
and re-running the report. This can be an iterative process, and at the end the user can save the definition as
a permanent report.
- Zooms - where defined, summary reports may provide a zoom option that allows the user to activate a report
that provides the breakdown supporting the information in the selected report cell by pointing to a specific cell
in the report and pressing the zoom button. Zooming is normally set up from a summary report to a detail report,
but may be set up, for example, from a company report to a cost center summary report, with only the next level
of zooming to a detailed report.
Automatic Scheduling
Once a report has been defined and saved, the report can be scheduled for automatic periodic generation. The
frequency of automatic reporting is established by time-of-day, day-of-week, day-of-month or specific days for
specific months.
Possible output device types for automatic reports are printer, file and e-mail. Each entry in the list of automatic
reports contains the report name, its frequency, the associated output device type and its name or address.
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