Difference between revisions of "CrossLinked Reports"

Revision as of 00:14, 26 October 2014

1 Overview

bxp software (bxp) has the ability to display a number of reports and representations of data.

One of the more complicated reports that can be built automatically and self generates is a Cross Linked report.

A cross linked report is a report that displays parent and children records in the same report screen.

There are a number of examples of parent child relationships:

• Business - Contacts
• Customer - Support Tickets
• Product - Parts
• House - Tenants

In bxp contacts (CCL records) are children records to a data record (CDA records). I one CDA can have multiple CCL records associated with it. A cross linked report is where two separate forms are linked. The first form contains the parent records and the second form contains the children records.

The linking is done usually by putting a "CrossLink" type field in the second form. i.e. a "Basic - Campaign Listing" type or "Basic - Campaign Search"

2 Worked Example - Setup

Do demonstrated how a cross linked report works, we build two forms. We make both forms of type Blended for convenience.

Form one is going to be our "Business" form. Like a sales pipeline, we store numerous business details in the form. So we create the form and add the fields:

• Basic - Text Box : Business Name
• Basic - Website Text Box : Website - Text Box
• Complex - Address Block (1,2,3, Post Code, Country) : Address

It should look like

At this point we also do some tidying up and set the Field Mapping field names and Search fields. For the search fields, we only use the Business Name

We now create a demo record in the form, ACME Incorporated.

Next we need to build a child form and link it to our parent form.

In our demo, the first form, Demo - CrossLinked - Business is form 615. The second form Demo - CrossLinked - Contacts is form 616.

So again we add our fields

• Basic - Campaign Listing : Business
• Complex - Title Block : Contact Name
• Basic - Text Box : Phone
• Basic - Email Text Box : Email

We sort out the field mapping and we set the search display fields to be Firstname, Surname, Phone and Email.

We need to link the Basic - Campaign Listing to the first form. So we use "Answer Values - Modify" and set the field to be intCDA_615_Id

We end up with the following:

We then add a couple of contacts to the second form, to fill out some data.

Record 1 :

• ACME Incorporated
• Mr Joe J Bloggs
• 01 429 4000
• joe.bloggs@acme.com

Record 2 :

• ACME Incorporated
• Ms Jane J Bloggs
• 01 429 4001
• jane.bloggs@acme.com

3 Worked Example - Creating the initial report

A cross linked report is built as part of a customised group report. The cross linked report requires a customised group report to be part of but the settings are completely independent of how the customised group reporting works.

So we create our customised group first.

Main Menu > Data Profiling > Customised - Group Management > Group - Create

The cross linked report MUST be set up on the parent form. So Form 615 in our example. We only need to fill out the first screen of the Customised Group set up, for the moment.

Form : Blended - Demo - CrossLinked - Business Group Name : Cross Linked Demonstration Unique Data Records : Yes Output Format : Cross Linked

Come back out to the Data Profiling menu, and choose Group - Edit Cross Linked Campaign Engine Settings > Demo - CrossLinked - Business > The form you created and you'll be presented with a screen as follows.

Cross Linked Options

• Layout : Interactive. See CrossLinked_Layouts for the different options available.
• Display Child Data : Yes. This allows you to see data from the child form, i.e. details of the contacts.
• File Output : False. If true all the generated data is sent straight to a file for download. We want it to appear on screen.
• Parameter Replacement Fields : Leave this blank for the moment.

Child Parameters

• Child Campaign : Choose the child form Blended - Demo - CrossLinked - Contacts
• Link Field : This is the Basic - Campaign Listing field. You use field mapping to find this information out. in our example case it is strCDA_616_field_0_1
• Child Campaign fields : Leave this blank for the moment.
• Child Calculation fields : Leave this blank for the moment. For more info on this field CrossLinked_Calculation_Fields

Interaction Options

• Flow Control : SameWindow
• eCourse Asset Ids : Allows eCourse assets to be drawn into the report. Leave blank.
• Show Parent Headers : False
• Parent Buttons : No
• AED Buttons - Parent : False
• Show Child Headers : False
• Child Buttons : No
• AED Buttons - Child : False

4 Worked Example - Creating a link to the report

Now getting into the report is the next step, so that you can see what you've set up so far before we begin tweaking.

We can use the Control Bar module to speed things up here and store our link for us.

Main Menu > Data Profiling > Instant - Dashboards > Control Bar Button - Cross Linked > Demo - CrossLinked - Business > Choose a Personal link > Click create the link

From here on your Main Menu there should be a new button in your private links called "CrossLinked - Cross Linked Demonstration"

When you click it, you won't get that much of an interesting report to look at. You will however note that the parent is displayed as 1 and indented below it are the two children contacts with ids 1 and 2.

5 Worked Example - Customising for the parent of the report

The first challenge we have is that we need to let the report know what parent fields to display.

This is done through the "Fields and Grouping" part of the customised report

Main Menu > Data Profiling > Customised - Group Management > Group - Edit Fields and Sequence > Demo - CrossLinked - Business > Choose your Customised Group > Tick "Business Name" and "Website" then Save and continue > On the next screen "Save and Continue" again.

Now we use our private link to review our report. You can now see the parent row has the fields displayed.

We now go back in to modify the settings of the CrossLinked report

Main Menu > Data Profiling > Customised - Group Management > Group - Edit Cross Linked Campaign Engine Settings > Demo - CrossLinked - Business > Choose your Customised Group > Interaction Options >

• Parent Buttons : Yes
• AED Buttons Parent : False

We see now that we have in the report and easy button to go straight to that record.

Tweaking again we add in the AED buttons. Main Menu > Data Profiling > Customised - Group Management > Group - Edit Cross Linked Campaign Engine Settings > Demo - CrossLinked - Business > Choose your Customised Group > Interaction Options >

• Parent Buttons : Yes
• AED Buttons Parent : True

Retrying our report we now see:

• AED Buttons are the new Edit Delete and Copy buttons to the left of the parent record

6 Worked Example - Customising for the children of the report

Now we want to customise the children fields. First thing we need to do is to pick up the fields we want to display for the children. We get this from the field mapping of the child form:

• Contact Name - Firstname: strCDA_616_field_1_2
• Contact Name - Surname: strCDA_616_field_3_2
• Phone: strCDA_616_field_0_6
• Email: strCDA_616_field_0_7

We add these into the report settings, separated by commas. We also turn on "Child Buttons = Yes" in the Interaction Options and we get: