Creating a report template

You can save report designs as report templates, allowing you to recall and use them as the starting point for a new report. In this way the basic structure of your reports, together with any special fields and shared labels is always consistent.

Note: You cannot edit a report template, but you can edit reports and save them as templates as required.

You can save any report that is open within Report Designer as a basic template *.stem. These templates are stored locally. To make a new template available to the Report Designer you must save the *.stem report to your My Documents folder.

Create a new report as normal. Add any generic fields or labels, for example, the positioning of page numbers, company logos and so on. Use File > Save As to display the Save As dialog. Enter a file name and ensure you add a .stem extension. Select Report Template (*.stem) from the Save As Type drop down menu. Click OK.

The template is saved with a level of detail appropriate to the type of template. That is, only valid report item types are saved in the template.

The following table lists the report items and whether they are valid in a report template. Properties for all valid items are saved in the template.


Report Item Type	Type	Valid	Exception
Report	Report	Yes
Section/Subsection	Page Header	Yes
	Page Footer	Yes
	Report Header	Yes
	Report Footer	Yes
	Detail	Yes
	Group Header	No
	Group Footer	No
Report Item	Line	Yes
	Rectangle	Yes
	Image	Yes
	Subreport	No
	Chart	No
	Textbox - Data Field	No
	Textbox - Summary Field	No
	Textbox - Field/Association Label	No
	Textbox - Shared Label	Yes
	Textbox - Free Text	Yes	Not valid if value references data field
Special Field Item	Created Date/Time	Yes
	Modified Date/Time	Yes
	Print Date/Time	Yes
	Report Title	Yes
	Page Number	Yes
	Row Number	Yes	Not valid if increment on group
	Business Unit Name (if using a connection to SunSystems)	Yes
	Business Unit Address (if using a connection to SunSystems)	Yes
	Base Currency	Yes
	First Page/Last Page	Yes
	Current Period	Yes
	DAG Applied Flag (if using a connection to SunSystems)	Yes
	Parameter - bound to data field	No
	Parameter - not bound to data field	Yes
Report Parameter	Bound to data field	No
	Not bound to data field	Yes
	System Parameters	Yes
Order by Group	Order by Group	No

To use your report template, select File > New Report or click the New Report icon on the menu bar. The New Report dialog is displayed. Enter a name, description and select an application source as you would to create a new report and the template name you created from the Template Name list.