Reports Overview
Reports are available in a variety of forms and formats in Mongoose. Generally, they fall into one of these categories:
- System form reports
- Custom reports generated using a user-created Report type form
- Custom reports generated using DataViews
- Custom reports generated using Microsoft SSRS
System form reports
The system includes a number of forms created for the purpose of generating certain reports. These report forms cover a wide spectrum of reportable data and can be customized to meet your business needs.
These reports can be identified by the use of the word "Report" in the form name/caption, for example: User Authorization Report
Custom reports from Report type forms
Mongoose now has a form type called "Report." The Report type of form allows you to create Mongoose forms that are designed to generate your custom reports. This is an improvement over other types of custom reports in Mongoose, in that you can both run and publish the report without having to use third-party reporting engines. This kind of report is ideal for reports that you want to generate on a regular basis, either on demand (by running the form) or automatically (as a background task).
Custom reports from DataViews
For certain kinds of reports, the DataViews functionality in Mongoose can be a valuable and easy tool to generate them. These are most commonly used for reports that you might want to generate "on the fly", without wanting to invest a lot of time and effort in formatting the results.
Custom reports using the Microsoft SSRS reporting engine
While you can still create and use these kinds of reports (and we still support them for backward compatibility), they are now deprecated. Instead, we recommend that you use either the new Report type of form or a DataView-based report.
Publishing reports
Reports can be published in several formats, which can then be delivered to printers, email addresses, or fax machines. Most reports also allow you to set various options and preview the output before actually publishing them.