RecChat: Templates in DataGrids and Reports 2/16/23
Templates are saves settings for frequently used configurations. Discover how they apply to reports and DataGrids.
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
Join your RecChat crew in an exploration of templates, and saved sets of configuration information, for Reports and DataGrids.
Recording
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:09
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of RecChat. I'm your host Bret Alarcon. So to in today's red chat, we're going to talk about templates. So templates are an easy way to recall, save criteria and filters in both reports and data grids. And we want everybody to know anything that might make their life simpler. With us today is Dan, he's going to be helping out with some questions. And Zack, he's going to be taking the topic. And with that, I think I'm gonna let you take it from here.
Zach Malloch 0:40
Am I can you hear me? All right? Yes. All right. My levels are just a little low in my ear. I'll do that. How's that? Does that change anything?
Bret Alarcon 0:48
That you still sound great.
Zach Malloch 0:49
Okay, good. All right. Yes. Oh, well, welcome, everybody to RecChat. As Brett mentioned, say, we're going to be diving into report and DataGrid templates. Now templates are, you're going to see them a lot of other places in RecTrac, you're going to see template design studio for passes, you're going to see report output templates, which are conveniently confusingly close to report criteria templates. But we'll try to make some distinctions in those and we'll be we will be focusing on basically saving your settings in those two areas. So let me start by sharing my Screen. And hopefully everybody can see my RecTrac At this point, thumbs up? Yeah, okay, good.
Zach Malloch 1:33
We're gonna start with report templates, because they're maybe a little bit faster to understand, there's a little bit less that you do with them. And as we'll talk about through this, maybe they're a little bit less, less pertinent, because if you're going to the whole purpose of building a template, is to get the same settings and recover them. So you can run the report without having to reconfigure everything every single time. If you're doing that frequently enough, maybe there's a case just to schedule the report. And the you don't even have to worry about the the criteria. But the case would be basically when you're coming in when you need to do something, and maybe you're running a report in a couple of different ways. And there are just the same settings that you're always doing. And you're flopping back and forth between two or three different ways running the report, or maybe at different times throughout the month, or just because your director calls you, you need to run the report in a couple of different ways. And you finally got it to show the data that you wanted, that they like and do you want to save that.
Zach Malloch 2:33
So basically, when we're talking about this template Button here, which is in every single report in RecTrac, on the lower right hand side, that is going to save every Field that is visible and accessible on the report Screen, and exactly how that how those fields are configured. Now, if you've watched some of our RecChats, or virtual symposiums, or if you have experience with scheduling reports, you'll know that anytime we talk about the dates, that we probably want to be using a relative date or a dynamic date, something that will move based on when you're running the report. Rather than having the same exact dates every single time you run the report, maybe it would be useful to see February 1 data every single time you run it. But theoretically, especially like a cash journal, you only want to see February 1 When you're running it on February 1. So if we leave the dates explicit like this, they will always come back with the exact same value. Whereas if we do something like setting this to today, then it will always go based on the date that you're actually running the report. And of course, we can do something along this line. So today minus one would mean yesterday. So if we want to just see yesterday's transactions, we could do something like that. And then when we create a report template, it will always save that information. When we apply this setting to run in three weeks, it will run for three weeks minus one day. So it will always give you yesterday's information. So that's a very important thing to be aware of if you are going to be doing scheduling, or if you're going to use the criteria templates.
Zach Malloch 4:13
So once again, if I was going in here, so I've already customized this a little bit, we're seeing activity visits, and we're going to filter by activity visits, we're going to use the let's turn off user name range, maybe I only want this to see my ZZZ transactions. So I'm highlighting just that one user. So I'm making selections in the criteria boxes, I'm making a selection in the DataGrid. And let's say that I want this to be let's just say the Pay Code summary report just to throw something out there. So if I go to report templates, when I create a new template, it will save all of those settings and we'll just use this as RecChat example. And we'll use the same code for both of these He says, of course, you can describe it more fully here and you do have permissions that you can apply to this template. So if you only want people at the aquatic center to be able to see this, if you only want people at the senior center to be able to see it, you have those sorts of controls. And you can I do recommend, if you're doing more than just one template, it probably makes sense to kind of say, this is configured, to run for the ZZZ user for the activity module. etc, like, describe why this template exists so that it's easier to understand and easier to figure out which one you want to pick. Because as you have more templates, you that's the whole purpose of this is you can very quickly switch between different configurations.
Zach Malloch 5:49
So if I wanted to apply this to our Cash journal, I'll just go ahead and hit apply, we're going to see that it's going to rebuild the report Screen with different settings applied to it. And probably I can predict that this will have a drawer number defined rather than a wide drawer range, but we'll see what it says notice that the output changed, I had it as the Pay Code summary, it switches to the cash journal. We're not using User range, we are using this posting date. And if we scroll down, there is our drawer range. So it's from 12, to 12. And actually, this template right here demonstrates one of the things that I would actually warn you against when you're setting up the template, don't just set it and then say that's good, make sure you're always running the report at least once to validate your settings. Because as this is set, I don't have the Username range set here, and I don't have any individual users. So this template, if I just applied it and then ran it, it wouldn't actually give us very much. So it follows the same rules and same conditions of reports. As far as that goes, you need to make sure that you actually are getting data. And I do recommend you do that before you actually save it. Let's move outlook over here. And then we have just to get back into this, because we're in our GL distribution report. If I come back to this RecChat example, I have a couple of different options to it if I update the template info, because it now knows that this is a cash journal template, or a GL distribution template. Oh, I'm sorry. That's a little different. actually curious why. Let me show you what I was expecting to see here.
Zach Malloch 7:34
So if I highlight one of these guys, it's probably because of the output template, I would guess. But let's Click update template info. And so there's a couple other settings here because this is a cached journal guy it's asking you Do you want to do it as a standard cash journal Do you want to include the balance sheet, the same sort of prompt that you would get after you decide to run the cash Journal report. So that is also included in this template. And I think that the reason for that is the output template that's selected because this is cached journal. These are all cached journal output templates, we have that this was that PAY CODE summary. So if I apply this template, it will once again rebuild this, it should turn back on the activity module and filter by so we'll should see the activity tab up here. We should also see that it's Pay code summary. And we should also see that it's got the Z ZZ user highlighted in the DataGrid. Once it finally builds out just reapplying the exact same settings that we had before. And it does. So there's a summary report, we've got the ZZ user selected, we've got activity visits there. And that gives us the activity criteria. And that has that date Field that I set. So the other thing that this illustrates is that every Screen of the report is also kind of carried over with that. And of course, anybody that's run reports has probably ran into a situation where we kind of forgot that maybe there was something turned on or off in one of the deeper screens that we were or were not anticipating. And that kind of skews the results that we get. And same deal here. As with regular reports, if you're not getting the information that you want, I do always recommend hitting this default settings. That's one of the first and easiest ways to troubleshoot a report. It just brings the report back to an UNrun state. Basically, if you were completely brand new, and you just built the RecTrac database and you came into this report the very first time, you would have these default settings in there.
Zach Malloch 9:30
So hit default settings, reconfigure it in whatever way you want to rerun it, make sure you're getting the results that you're expecting. And then you don't have to create a new template. Let's just say that we were doing some of our configuration we'll switch this back to today we'll adjust. Let's put a couple of different modules in here. And I'm just doing this to get some configuration in place and then when we go to report templates, if I highlight The template that I was working on, I can save the template settings. And that overwrites the settings that were associated with this and replaces them with whatever I currently have on the Screen right now. So you can update it as you as you might discover your need to do so. So we've got that, that is report templates. Let me see if there's anything else. And that's basically what I wanted to talk about that Oh, actually, there is one more little thing I'm going to tie in here is that once you've gone through the work of building out those templates, if anybody is as much of a fan of the report output listing, as we tend to be here at Vermont systems, when you decide to run a report from this location. So let's say we're going to do just our cash journal. Where is it?
Zach Malloch 10:53
Right there. When we run a report, it gives us the option of just hitting continue, and it's going to run the report. But we can also choose the template and it will pre configure the Screen with those settings for us. So we don't have to wait for the Screen to load and then go to templates, then apply it and then wait for it to load again, we can do get directly into the proper configuration right from here. And I saw maybe a question pop up. Is that something we want to address right now, Bret?
Bret Alarcon 11:22
Let's see. This may be an old issue that might not exist. I haven't tried to do in some time. But I recall when I would create a new Screen design for using for use in the report Screen management cannot find a way to bring over or clone the report templates that users would see. The list would be blank. Is there a way to make existing users user created templates available to new Screen designs?
Zach Malloch 11:48
That's a good question. So you're actually creating a custom version of the GL distribution report Screen. I could see the logic that we're using could very well tie the template to the name of the Screen, which would then be unique for each design. So that's a good question. I don't know for sure if that has been changed at all, Jamie, it's not something I've tested recently. Maybe if we get to the end of this, there's a couple of steps. So I don't want to run through the test right immediately. But we get into DataGrid templates. And then if we have extra time, we can come back to that. Otherwise, we'll leave that maybe, Dan, you could put post that for follow up or if you want to test it real quick while we're going. And then let me know that would be great. Also, if you have that time.
Daniel Rotondi 12:38
Yeah, sure.
Zach Malloch 12:39
Okay. All right. Good point, though. So DataGrid templates. So you can of course, get to DataGrid templates everywhere. There's a DataGrid. So you can have a DataGrid template in a report that interacts with your report templates, potentially. But we can also go to any DataGrid that exists in the system. So if I go to activity management for an example, or global sales, the house will look up or when you're actually in global sales, looking for activities or passes. All of those are data grids, and all of them have the ability of setting templates, when you're creating a template for a DataGrid. It is basically a snapshot of exactly how the DataGrid looks at this point. So if I wanted to say I'm filtering this just for things that start with Rec, I'm putting in a value in this Type Field up here, if I wanted to sort this reverse order, and if I wanted to, let's go to Options, and we'll go to Show Settings. And maybe we're not using waitlist and most things don't have a waiver. So I'm going to turn off those two columns. So now I have a more simplified DataGrid.
Zach Malloch 13:47
It's actually from this show settings area that we can create those templates. Now if this is something that you want just for yourself, then you can create it right from here. If it's something that you want anybody else to access, you have to turn this on before you hit Create new template. So let's just call this another RecChat example. And I'll turn on this make template available for everyone. I'll hit Create new template. And so now if I close this, well, it's still configured like this. But if I go back to the My defaults, so the way it looks, you know, square one, when you first set everything up, then we go to RecChat example. And so that then reconfigures this, we have that filter in place, we have the activity reverse sorted, and we're hiding a couple of those columns. So it's very easy to go back and forth between multiple templates. And you'll always have access to go back to this default. A couple other things that you have under here and options is it also control or it also remembers what you had set for like any of these toggles. So if you wanted to lock a column, let's say you want the activity code to always be locked. And what that means is you always have this on the left hand side so doesn't matter how far You scroll over, you can still see what that activity number is. All of those settings are also saved when you are creating a template. Now, if I highlight this wreck chat example, then I can save the template. And that will basically override what I had here with what I have now. So it's basically the same thing except I turned on this locked Toggle. So hit Save Template now has been updated. So we're good to go with that. So if I once again, go back to defaults, it resets everything, I go back to the RecChatter example, it brings us back to what we were set to when we save that, and I must have gotten to default and then gone in and turned on the locked column, because it got rid of some of our other filters. But that's part of the function of this, it saves it exactly as it is displaying at the point you tell it to do so.
Zach Malloch 15:53
Let's see. The other thing that you can do with these templates is you can actually set this as a default, so you can see which template is being used. And you can also say, Well, this is actually the default that I want this to always look like whenever I come in here doesn't matter if it's tomorrow, or five weeks from now or next year, I want it to always load this with the settings that I currently have. Now this is setting it as a default for your login. So if anybody else wanted to do that, they'd have to repeat these steps, there's not a way to like distribute that configuration. But what that means is that if I close my activity Management tab, and I come to an activity management, again, it will start with that column locked. If I didn't have that set, or like I can give the example here, let's go to active only. So we don't have that column locked. If I close this, and then reload it. Probably guess what's about to happen here, oh my gosh, it's exactly the same thing. It's using that as the default. So that's kind of our, our nice little things so that you configure this, you don't have to one skin wait for the DataGrid to load then come up, then choose the setting that you want to adjust it to then wait for it to redraw.
Zach Malloch 17:08
You can just have it set as the default. So when you come into it, it is configured and displaying in the way that you want it to already. Was there another question that popped up?
Bret Alarcon 17:20
No.
Zach Malloch 17:21
Oh, Dan was in very Oh, it was in there was chat. And wanted me to point out that we just added a new topic doc about report criteria templates and like, so he posted that to chat so everybody can access this. Not through RecTrac yet, but hopefully very soon. I know we we had a RecChat saying that this was published about two months ago. And unfortunately, it has not yet been but very soon we are getting into the new help era very soon. And what a great way to start it with a report template help. I think that's most of what I wanted to show about this. We went through it pretty quickly. It is a pretty concise topic. Let's see Tracy is asking about group. So what group is it actually probably, I can guarantee anybody that's been into Profile assignments, has seen what grouping does. By default, the Profile list is grouped by the Type of Profile that it is that we can do that in any DataGrid in the system. So if I come back to activity management, if I go to Options, let's go to Show Settings. And let's group by Type. So I turn on this Type group. And we'll close this. And we can see that now everything that's outdoor is all grouped together. And we can expand this to see what the outdoor group contains. Same thing with aquatics, same things with fitness, etc. So we can group by any Field, there are certainly some fields that make more sense to group than others. It has to be a visible Field. So you have to have it turned on.
Zach Malloch 19:09
If you grouped by activity code, that would be kind of weird in this case, because each activity code is only represented once. So you'll only have one thing under each of these groups. So that probably doesn't make sense. But, you know, Type subtype category, the things that are supposed to represent larger groupings of things are the things that really make sense to do as a group. You could do it by waiver, maybe you want to see everything that's tied to the same waiver. So I come down, find my waiver code, make sure that's turned on, and I'll group by the waiver code instead. And so now we can see anything that's linked to the general waiver versus the web waiver versus general waiver. So maybe not a lot of cases where you need that But in the case that you're looking for something combined with or that has that consistent value, you can do that in any DataGrid with any of our fields. And also actually real quick while we're here, just to reiterate this capability of the DataGrid. Let's say we want the long description, instead of the short description. So I can drag the long description up here. And I can move the short description down, or I could just turn off the short description. So you can move and re sort reorder the columns, just by clicking and dragging to move them around. Once again, that's any DataGrid that you have access to get to the Show Settings. Toggle four, or Button four, I guess. So, yeah, so Tracy said that was nice, glad that worked for you that made sense as far as what the grouping option does. And actually, like, just while we're here, we kind of talked about what Locke does, oh, so this would be one of my favorite little things. As far as an ease of use Type of thing. If I go, actually, maybe it's an activity management, I think it's probably in sections, but we'll see. So the fees happen to also be a DataGrid. And under a template, I have this edit amounts option, which I turned that on. And it just turns this did not let me make sure I probably messed up that configuration sometime between now and when I actually created it. So amount, we want this edit title turned on, we'd highlight this, and we'd hit Save to update it.
Zach Malloch 21:46
Let's close that. And so basically anything that's linked directly at this level, I just hit that Button. And it's automatically set to this edit. So I can just zip through and update those fees as I want to. And then I switch it back to defaults when I went to turn that off. And so it's easy to get in there and make some of these few changes. This is per area. So like, I have this now, this edit amount option in activity management fee Screen. If I also wanted that inactivity section fee Screen, I would have to go to the section, go to the fee Screen there, make sure that that template is set up, it's not going to pull the template from that higher level to use at the lower level. So that is something that you might need to just be they are very specific with which exact DataGrid it is that the templates are applied to. And if I have it here, it's because I already Yeah, I think the other one was called Edit amounts rather than update amounts. But I don't have any fees linked directly here. So we didn't really see anything change. But that is something to be aware of is that you would need to do it at each level of the DataGrid that you'd want to do that for. But that's just one of a little less common reason for doing the data grids. But it's definitely a lot a lot faster than you know coming to the FIE Screen and double clicking on the feed changing the amount double clicking on the next feed changing amount double clicking on Next feed changing an addict cetera, you can just zip right through.
Zach Malloch 23:18
We can also do it with activity sections. This dates more prominent, the dates are moved over by default, they're a little bit further to the right. So they're all the way over at the right hand side, we noticed that that was already there when I came in. Because I had set that as my default switch always loads like that when I initially come in. So it can be useful for just kind of operational flow, like how do you prefer to see your data in the system? What makes sense to you. If something you're always having to scroll to the right to find something, just move those columns over and save it as a template and set as your default if you want to. Another just real quick use case. I'll just do a couple more of these to finish us off unless there's any other questions coming in very happy to answer anything else that people might have curiosity about. But right from global sales, this is something that sometimes can be more useful to your front desk staff. Now DataGrid templates are still pretty personal. So like, you can make a DataGrid and make it or make it out a great template, make it available for everyone. But you can't set it as a default for somebody else. They would have to come in and choose it and then set it as their own default. But we can make multiple templates available. And so by default, I've got this saved just so I'm only seeing my annual passes. So if I go back to my default, right here, it shows me all of my memberships under activity, I have it defaulting to show me everything, but I can jump down and I can just see my aquatics programs or I can just see my fall programs. So that is filtered by the beginning number of the activity, whereas the other one was filtered by the Type, I believe, yeah, Type is rec aquatics.
Zach Malloch 25:10
So just different ways of maybe making it faster for your front desk staff to narrow down your lists for what might be really popular things for your customers. And once again, it works anywhere, there is a DataGrid. So any part of global sales, you can have it for purchases, or purchase history, I'm sorry. So if you want it to only show good, it's pretty quick to move back and forth just see activities. But one of the things that can really start to kind of gum up purchase history is pass visits, because every time somebody swipes their card, you're going to have it in here. So maybe we would choose all of our records, except for past visits, because you're probably not coming in here to purchase specifically cancel a particular pass that then you could save that as a template and then set that as your default. So you're not even seeing visits when you initially come in here. So just different use cases, different reasons where you could potentially improve the flow for various customers, and sorry for your front desk staff or different people in different positions. And that's templates for DataGrids. And for report criteria. I don't see any open questions right now. So unless somebody has something, we can go ahead and sign off and say Happy Thursday, and we'll see you in two weeks.
Daniel Rotondi 26:32
Zack, Zack, before we do I just wanted to say that I tested Jamie's scenario, it looks like that there is some sort of, you know, connection to the custom Screen design. And the templates, because, you know, just as Jamie had described, we do lose those templates that were created on the default design. When we create a custom Screen for that. I could see the reason being you know, you're we're not sure what filters you're going to be taking on or making hidden. So I think for for that, just keep that in mind, if you're going to be making custom report screens that those templates are going to get reset, what custom Screen gets added here.
Zach Malloch 27:17
Now I wonder did you try cloning? By chance? Dan, could you create a custom design, create a template and then Click on it? Um, that would be the case where I could potentially see something coming over. But But yeah, I'm guessing that it's tied to. So basically, when we create a custom Screen design for a particular Screen, it has a different unique ID kind of in the backend of the database. And that's where things are kind of tied back.
Daniel Rotondi 27:43
No, I didn't try cloning it, Zack, I created a template on the default. And then I came in here and I created a custom Screen and went back just to check if my template was still there. And it was not. Jamie followed up. He wanted to separately verify as a system admin, we cannot create a template and force it to be the default template for users.
Zach Malloch 28:07
I don't believe so. No
Daniel Rotondi 28:08
I don't believe so. Jamie, that was something we were talking about before we signed on at 2 this afternoon. And we were looking specifically at that little pop up that shows up before you get to the report Screen. But after selecting a report from report output listing or management, where you get to choose that the template but we don't believe that there's any way to actually set the default that shows up on that pop up.
Zach Malloch 28:34
Yeah, that is an area where it is still down to kind of walking the individual user through it a lot of things we can go from top down. And actually maybe that's something we could put an enhancement request on, Dan, I don't know how much priority that would get. But making default template and accessible Field in Screen design.
Daniel Rotondi 28:55
Yeah, I can get that written up.
Zach Malloch 28:58
That could you know, once again, it could potentially because it's tied to permissions. It could be a little bit weird. But we'll let developers worry about that part. All right. Any final thoughts from you, Bret? Thank you for that.
Bret Alarcon 29:14
Yeah, no none from me.
Zach Malloch 29:16
Okay. Well, thank you all for being a part of this very concise RecTrac RecChat. It was concise until I started messing up the name of the broadcast. Yeah, thank you all. Hopefully, there's something in there to play with. It is a non damaging Type of thing to play with. You know, reports aren't going to change the system. DataGrid templates aren't going to change the system. You can always delete them if you don't like them and always just get right back to the DataGrid defaults just by clicking on that template Button to to reset. So no harm no foul if you want to play around with it. And if you don't like it, just get rid of them. Alright, I think that's it. Thank you all for your attention. And Bret I think we're ready to head out
Bret Alarcon 30:00
All right sounds good, take care everyone
Zach Malloch 30:02
Bye Everybody
Daniel Rotondi 30:03
Thank you
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