Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Report Designer

This lesson provides general information about the Acumatica Report Designer and explains how you can install it.

Report Designer: General Information

The Acumatica Report Designer is a Windows application that provides visual tools to design custom reports. With the Report Designer, you can select data for a report, calculate the required values based on the selected data, and customize the layout of the report.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

Install the Acumatica Report Designer
Start the Acumatica Report Designer and explore its interface

Applicable Scenarios

You may want to use the Acumatica Report Designer in the following circumstances:

You are responsible for the customization of Acumatica ERP in your company, including developing and modifying reports to give users the information they need to do their jobs.
You need to deliver diﬀerent reports that your colleagues may need for getting their jobs done. By using the Acumatica Report Designer, you can develop reports based on the Acumatica ERP data.

Advantages of the Report Designer

The Report Designer is a reporting tool that uses SQL queries to retrieve data from the Acumatica ERP database. The Report Designer gives you the following advantages for representing data in reports:

Use of formatting options, for example, font style, size, color, and background color
Ability to use predefined and custom style templates
Management of the report layout based on your needs
Use of pictures, barcodes, and charts

Installation of the Report Designer

You install the Acumatica Report Designer by using the Acumatica ERP Installer wizard. In the wizard, the Install Report Designer check box is cleared by default; you need to select this check box and make sure that the other check boxes are cleared, as shown in the following screenshot. Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Report Designer | 11

Figure: The Acumatica ERP Installer wizard

The Report Designer receives from the Acumatica ERP application server all the information you need to design any report. You do not need to install Acumatica ERP locally to change or develop the report; you can just connect to a remote server by using the appropriate URL.

The User Interface of the Report Designer

To open the Report Designer, you use the following path: Start > All Programs > Acumatica > Report Designer. This opens the main window, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure: The main window of the Report Designer

The main window of the Acumatica Report Designer includes the following panes:

The Design pane on the le part of the window (Item 1 in the screenshot above), which includes the following tabs:
Design: Displays the report layout. Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Report Designer | 12
Preview: Gives you the ability to preview the report you are designing, so you can control the intermediate results. If your report requires parameters, they are ignored, and the report is displayed with random data.
The Tools pane in the top right of the window (Item 2), which provides access to the elements and tools that you can use to design the layout of the report and add its content.
The Properties pane in the bottom right of the window (Item 3), which includes the following tabs:
Properties: Displays the properties of the report element selected in the Design pane. When you select a report element in the drop-down list, the set of properties in the properties list corresponds to the selected element. By using the buttons above the properties list, you can change the order of the properties to be listed under the categories of the properties or in alphabetical order of the names of properties.
Fields: Lists all the fields of the data access classes selected as the source of data for the report. The Report Designer window toolbar (Item 5) is located above the Design pane and provides single-click access to common actions. You can also access these actions on the Report Designer menu bar (Item 4).

Report Designer: To Install the Acumatica Report Designer

In the following activity, you will learn how to install and launch the Acumatica Report Designer.

Story

Suppose that you are a technical specialist in your company who is working on customizations. An accountant of the company has requested a number of reports that are not among the predefined reports. To develop reports based on the data of Acumatica ERP, you have decided to use the Acumatica Report Designer, which is included in the Acumatica ERP installation package.

Process Overview

In the Acumatica ERP Installer wizard, you will select the option to install the Acumatica Report Designer. Aer the application is installed, you will start it.

System Preparation

Before you begin the steps of the activity, download AcumaticaERPInstall.msi from the following folder: http://acumatica-builds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html?prefix=builds// /AcumaticaERP. In this link, Version and buildNumber are the version and build number that correspond to the build of Acumatica ERP that is installed in your company.

Step 1: Installing the Acumatica Report Designer To install the Acumatica Report Designer, do the following:

On your computer, start AcumaticaERPInstall.msi. The Acumatica ERP Installer wizard starts.
On the Welcome page, click Next.
On the End-User License Agreement step, select a check box next to I accept the terms in the License Agreement.
On the Main Soware Configuration step, select the Install Report Designer check box, and clear the other check boxes.
On the Destination Folder step, modify the default destination folder, if needed, by clicking the Change… button. Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Report Designer | 13
Continue the installation process.
When the installation is finished, close the window of the Acumatica ERP Installer wizard.

Step 2: Starting the Acumatica Report Designer To start the Acumatica Report Designer, on the Windows Start menu, select All apps > Acumatica > Report Designer. The Acumatica Report Designer is displayed. Lesson 2: Discovering DACs | 14