Reporting overview

SunSystems Reporting Services (SRS) is an intuitive, easy to use reporting and document production tool. It enables reporting on data based on reporting object models. These reporting models provide an intelligent abstraction of an application’s data structures, eliminating the technical complexities of physical data structures.

SunSystems Reporting Services comprises these functions:

Report Designer (RED): Used to confidently design a report or document to be printed, viewed on screen, or published in a variety of formats. Customized reports can be designed, based on example reports.
Report Manager (RMA): Used to run and view reports through a Web Browser interface. This includes features to support organization of reports and report output in user defined folder structures, and to generate reports in a variety of formats.
Report Backups (RMB): Used to back up and restore report store folders and individual report items. Backup sets can be created to specify which type of report item, specific folder, or individual reports must be backed up.
Report Schedules (RMC): Used to create and run reports automatically at a specified time on a one-time or repeating basis.
Report Models (RMD): Used to synchronize the business unit-specific definitions for analysis and value labels into a simplified model structure that simplifies report authoring.

Running a report

The ways to run a report within SunSystems include:

From a SunSystems process, for example Payment Run or Corporate Allocation Run.
From the Actions menu of a system form.
From Report Manager by selecting a report in the Store.
From a report shortcut menu item or favourite in the menu panel.

Note: For every report that is produced by a process or a forms action, a Document Format (DFS) is required. A document format provides the link between the report you select in a SunSystems process or form, and the reporting process that produces the report. Reports that are run directly from Report Manager or from menu shortcuts do not require a document format.

When running a report, you may be prompted to enter the required report parameters, either in the Document Format Run Time Report Parameters form, the Report Manager Parameters form, or both, depending on the report and the settings in the Document Format setup record.

Output types

Regardless of how the report is run, you can choose the type of output you require. You can view, print, or store the report, or choose any combination of these.

If you view a report, it is displayed online immediately and you can then optionally choose to print it.
If you print a report, it is printed immediately and then deleted from the system.
If you store a report, you save the report in the output file set in the report parameters. The default output location is your My Reports\Output folder, but another output location may be set in the parameters when you run the report. You can use Report Manager to retrieve the stored report. You can then view, print or delete the report file.