Template Support
End-users or Framework developers can define their own report templates. Report templates are Excel documents that contain placeholders for actual report field values. Those placeholders will be substituted with real values during report generation. Think mail merge in Microsoft Word. Placeholders can easily be identified as they always start with “<#” and end with “>” (e.g. “<#dem_org.n1>”.
Note that the use of Excel document as templates does not limit the report output format to Excel only. Users can still generate Excel, PDF, and HTML reports. CSV format however does not support the use of templates (templates will be ignored when CSV format is selected).
To assist Framework developers and end-users in creating report templates, VLF.NET is capable of producing initial templates containing all the fields (i.e. the placeholders) from relevant business objects. Framework developers or end-users can then modify this template easily (remove unwanted columns, apply formatting etc).
Benefits of Using Excel Document as TemplatesThe use of Excel document as a report template allows the end-users to generate reports sophisticated enough to satisfy their needs. Any formatting applied to an Excel template will be fully applied to the reports generated based on that template.
Due to the simplicity of Microsoft Excel and its popularity amongst office workers, this feature will enable end-users to easily modify or even create their own templates, apply various formatting to suit their needs. Such a thing is unthinkable for more complex tools such as Crystal Reports.
Shared and Private Templates
There are two types of templates:
- Shared templates
- Private templates
Shared templates are basically public templates, shared across the company. Private templates are “My Templates” - they are accessible only to the users creating the templates. Private templates are stored in the “My Documents” folder of the user creating the private reports.
Shared templates should be packaged and then uploaded to your Framework website.
Shipped Sample Templates
Sample templates are installed to the partition execute folder in a file called SampleReportTemplates.zip. You need to unzip the contents of the zip file to the “My Documents” folder on your PC in order to use them.