Proposal Without Descriptions

Creating a Proposal Without Descriptions

Creating a proposal with no description fields for products is a very easy customization but it does require three custom reports: the main report and two sub-reports.  This is because of the three “levels” of our data hierarchy in SI5.5.  The “main” proposal report deals with the first level of data which is single products and package names.  The second level of data is the accessories for products not in a package and single products package.  The third level of data is the accessories for products in a package.

Generally a sub-report is “bound” to the “main” report.  A sub-report can have its own sub-reports bound to it and that is the case here.  The three reports we will be modifying today are named: Proposal, Proposal Level2 Items, and ProposalLevel3 Items.  The ProposalLevel3 Items report is bound to the Proposal Level2 Items report which is then bound to the main Proposal report.  It may sound confusing but the operations to create this report are quite simple.

Note: the steps below assume some experience or knowledge with working within SI5.5 and the Report Designer.  For more help on customizing reports, click here.

We will work from the bottom of the hierarchy up:

1.       Open the Report Designer for Standard Reports:

2.       Choose to create a new report and within the wizard, choose “New Report Based on Existing Report”

3.       Select the Proposal Level3 Items report from the list and click [Next]:

4.       Name the report something clever and then click [Next] through all of the rest of the steps and click [Finish] on the last step

5.       Simply select the “Description” tag, right-click and select Delete:

6.       Click the Publish Report button.  When prompted to close the Report Designer, choose [No]:

7.       Repeat Steps 2-5 above, except choose the Proposal Level2 Items report this time in step 3

8.       Now we want to bind our custom Proposal Level3 Items report to this report to replace the stock Proposal Level3 Items sub-report that is bound to the report.  This sub-report control is located in the grpItemFooter section of the report.  You may need to drag the section to expand it slightly so that you can select the sub-report control.  You won’t be able to see the control but if you click in the section you will see a gray bar indicating that the control is selected.  You can double check this by looking at the (Name) field in the Properties section of designer, the name should show “subProposalLevel3Items”:

9.       While the sub-report control is selected, right-click and select “Bind To D-Tools Report”:

10.   Select the custom Proposal Level3 Items you created and click [OK]

11.   Repeat step 6

12.   Repeat steps 2-5 above but this time select the Proposal report this time in step 3.  Another slight difference is that the field you will be deleting in step 5 is named “<Product Description>”.

13.   Repeat steps 8-10, except this time you will be binding the custom Proposal Level2 Items report created above.

14.   Publish the report and choose [Yes] when prompted to close the Report Designer.

15.   Run your new report and marvel at your creation.

-Seth Enos