This is one of three robust printing dialogues. The others are our Schedule printing and Statistics printing screens. From this printing dialogue you can create and save any type of contact report you wish. If you have used our statistics screen before, you are aware that you can create and save different statistics reports and this function acts very similar. In order to access this print function, use the menu bar and select Reports|Contact Printing or click Contact Printing from the Left Side bar . The following dialogue will appear. Even though this dialogue box is not set within the outlook style forms, it will utilize the functionality on the tool bar and menu bar. We have purposefully tried two different styles between the schedule printing and contact printing. We will be obtaining user feedback to determine which is most user friendly and intuitive.
This dialogue has a number of very unique features that you should read through prior to creating reports. There are two main sections of this dialogue: Contact parameters on the left, and report layout parameters on the right.
Contact Parameters
The first is the contact display criteria in which you define all the parameters for which to select the contacts to be reported. All of these parameters appear on the left hand side. Several of the dropdown boxes are only available when printing certain types of contacts. For example player type is only available if printing players. Since Team contacts do not have a player type, if you elect to print players and team contacts together, then the player type parameter will not be available. The contact type checkboxes also affect what fields you can print. Players have data like Team, Jersey number, position, etc. League Contacts do not. So when you select multiple contact types to print, the software will only allow a common set up columns to be selected from. You also have a subset of keyword search fields similar to the Find Contacts function from which to use.
Report Layout
The right hand side contains reporting formatting parameters. These will determine the layout of the report.
The top section are the columns which will appear on the report. The following described each option from this selection grid.
Select: In order to place a column on the report, it must be selected by placing a checkbox in this column.
Column: This is the system name for the column. It is for reference and cannot be changed.
Display Label: This is the heading you wish to used for the selected column.
Display Order: This is the order the columns will appear across the top of the report. If two columns have the same number, they will be stacked one on top of the other (see stacking below).
Sort Order: This determines the order that the contacts will be sorted on the report.
Width: Width of the column (in twips)
Justify: Data and headings for a column can be left, center or right justified.
The following is a description of the fields appearing below the columns grid.
Select Field to Group the Report By: You can group the report by up to two different grouping selections. These will group contacts by the selected entries and create headings for them. They are always the top sort order columns.
Page Break when Group Changes: If you have selected a grouping, then this option will start each new group on a separate page.
Print Line Between Contacts: A line separator is printed between each contact record.
Font: This is the base font, color and size for the main records of the report. Column headings and titles will use the same font and color, but increase the size proportionally.
Portrait or Landscape: This prints on either 8.5x11 or 11x8.5 formats.
Date Format: Fields that are displayed as dates will use this format.
Web Publishing
Not all web publishing of your data has to occur on the Web Publishing screens. On the screens where Web Publishing Supports the publishing of data, there will be additional fields to support and customize the publishing of data. On the Contact Printing Screen, there are three fields:
Short Name: This is used with Web Publishing when display a specific report on a web page. You refer to this report on your web site with this name. The name has restrictions on the use of special characters. Ideally it should be a single word with no spaces.
Template Name: You can add a number of different templates through the Web Publishing Look and Feel screens. For each report you wish to publish you can select to use the default or customized template.
Publish Button: This button may be active or inactive. If the button is active then you simply click the button to publish the report. If the button is inactive you must sign into web publishing from the login screen. In order to login, you must first sign up for the web publishing service through www.analyzersoftware.com.
Printing Reports
Once you have selected all contact parameters and report formatting, you can show the contacts on the screen in a grid or print the contacts on a paper report for printing. Clicking display will generate all contact into a grid for display. The Print button will generate a report which will also be shown on the computer, but can then be printed to any format (paper, HTML or Text file). Displaying the report in the grid will not perform all the grouping and stacking that a printed report will. Once the grid is displayed, click the "Hide Grid" link to show printing parameters once again.
Printing Labels
Only from the grid view can you print labels now. The contact listed in the grid will be the only ones for which labels will be printed for. Click the "Print Labels" link and the print label dialogue will be displayed. Click here to read more about printing labels.
Exporting Contact Information
Again, this function is only available from the grid view. Clicking on the link will allow you to select the files name and location for the export, then all contact information shown in the grid will be exported to CSV format which can be read into Microsoft Excel or many other programs.
Send Email
This function is only available from the grid view. Clicking on the link will take all email addresses from all the contacts displayed and open your default mail client with all the email addresses in the "Send To:" field. It will only generate an email if you have selected one of the two email addresses. If you select both email addresses, it takes entries that appear in both. You should then add your own subject and email body and any attachments. If you wish to have the recipients CC'd or Blind Copied, then simply cut and paste the list of email addresses into the appropriate field.
Stacking Columns
You have the ability to stack columns on the report (you should be thinking...that's cool). Fields like address, city, state, etc. are not ideal for printing across the top of the report. So this printing function allows you to stack any fields on top of one another.
In order for stacking to occur, the fields to be stacked, must have the same number in the display order columns. You can see in the example above, all address fields had the display order of 4. The sort order column will determine the order of the stacking.
A quick issue you have probably already thought about is the display label or column headings...how is that handled? Well, we thought of that as well. The display label has some flexible functionality. In the screen shot at the top, the address is going to be stacked with the fields appearing on top of each other. In order to stack, the display order must be the same (in this case 4). Therefore, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, State/Prov and Country will be stacked. The stacking order is based on the sort order column. With stacking columns you have one column heading and this is taken from the display label of the first column in the stack. However, if you where stacking phone numbers, the heading might be phone numbers, but how could you tell which number was which (cell, home, work, fax, etc.). Well the display label can also help out. Any time you have a display label with a pipe ("|") in it (stacking or no stacking), everything to the left of the pipe is a column heading, everything to the right is an inline report heading placed immediately to the left of the field. In the example above, the piping of display labels would create the following:
Notice that the address is left justified with the heading. The inline report labels appear to there left, so you will need to ensure that your column to the left is wide enough to accommodate the label and its own data.
When you do save a report, all parameters and formatting information on the screen is saved with the exception of the data. When the report is saved and run at a later time, it will pick up new data in the system.
You have several options around saving reports. When you click the ‘Save’ button, the report displayed is replaced by all data entered, even if the report name changed. You can also select an existing report, make modifications to the report format and click the ‘Save New’ button and the existing report is not modified, but a new report is saved. This allows you to start with a general report as a template and make modifications saving with the Save New button to create a new report.
That is it for this function. If you have any feedback on this new feature, we would sure enjoy hearing from you.