myContactCenterManual

Designing reports

The report designer at a glance — ribbon, toolbox, design surface and windows — as well as how to switch between design and preview and which keyboard shortcuts help.

You create report designs in the Report designer. It is based on the DevExpress report designer; these pages describe it as myContactCenter shows it. How to create designs, copy them from templates, save them and make them available to supervisors is described in Report designs.

  • In the Administration, a double-click on a design under Reporting module › Report design opens the Report designer window. Each open design is a tab of its own there.
  • In the Agent, supervisors with the Report designer permission design reports in the Report module — see Report and dashboard. If the module is docked, the tabs of the designer appear in the ribbon of the Agent.

The layout

Ribbon Home · Layout · Page · View Designer · Preview · Scripts Toolbox Design surface with the bands TopMargin PageHeader Detail ReportFooter BottomMargin Group and Sort Report Design Analyzer Groups, sorting · notes on the layout Report Explorer Field List Report structure · fields Properties Report Gallery Settings of the control Status bar: selected control · messages · zoom
The windows of the report designer
Area Purpose
Ribbon commands, spread over the tabs Home, Layout, Page and View; at the top right, the switch between Designer, Preview and Scripts
Toolbox the controls you drag onto the page — see Controls
Design surface the page of the report, divided into bands
Field List the fields of the query, the calculated fields and the parameters — see Data and expressions
Report Explorer the structure of the report as a tree: bands, controls, styles, formatting rules, data sources
Properties all settings of the selected control
Report Gallery a store for parts you use in several designs — see Page, preview and export
Group and Sort groups and sorting of the data — see Grouping and summarizing
Report Design Analyzer errors and warnings about the design, for example overlapping controls; a click jumps to the control
Status bar name and position of the selected control, the number of messages from the analyzer and the zoom

You bring back a hidden window with View › View › Windows. The windows can be moved and docked; the Agent remembers their arrangement for each supervisor.

The ribbon

Home

Group Commands
Report New Report with the base types, Open…, Save with Rename, Save All, Export — see Report designs
Data Add Data Source, Add Calculated Field, Add Parameter
Clipboard Paste, Cut, Copy
Font font and font size, Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Background Color, Foreground Color
Alignment text at the top, middle or bottom, left, centered, right or justified
Borders border lines, Border Color, Border Width, Border Dash Style
Styles creating and assigning styles — see Formatting

Layout aligns several selected controls with each other, makes sizes and spacing equal and brings controls to the front or sends them to the back. The commands for equal width, height and size and for equal spacing have names such as Make Same Width.

Page sets Margins, Orientation, Size, Page Color and Watermark — see Page, preview and export.

View shows grid lines, watermarks and warnings, expands and collapses bands, zooms and, under Windows, shows and hides the windows.

Contextual tabs appear as soon as you select a matching control: Table Tools for table cells, Text Tools for labels, Chart Tools for charts and others for barcode, gauge, sparkline and shape.

Designer, preview, scripts

At the top right of the ribbon, you switch the view:

  • Designer shows the design surface; this is where you design.
  • Preview runs the design with the real data. First, the Parameters pane asks for the period, skills and the other parameters; Submit runs the report. The preview does not save anything — save the design afterwards with Save.
  • Scripts shows the program code of a design. Some templates calculate their service levels with it; for your own designs, expressions are almost always sufficient.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key Effect
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, Delete copy, cut, paste, delete
Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y undo, redo
Arrow keys move selected controls; with Ctrl in small steps, with Shift change the size
Ctrl while dragging copies the control
Alt while dragging without snapping to the grid
F4, F5 designer, preview
Ctrl+S save
Ctrl+mouse wheel zoom

In this section

Page Content
Bands how a report is divided into bands and which band is printed how often
Controls toolbox, selecting, arranging, smart tag
Data and expressions field list, expressions, calculated fields, your own parameters, what myContactCenter prepares when a report runs
Grouping and summarizing groups, sorting, totals, filters
Formatting format strings, styles, colors by condition
Tables, charts, cross tabs the large controls
Page, preview and export paper, page numbers, watermarks, preview, export, gallery
Examples step by step: list, group, totals, chart, header

Which fields the queries provide is described in Statistics fields.

Bands How a report is divided into horizontal bands, which band is printed how often and how to insert, hide and set up bands. Controls Which controls the toolbox offers, how to insert, select and align them and set them up via the smart tag, and when a control grows with its content. Data and expressions Where a report design gets its data, how to bring fields from the field list onto the page, calculate with expressions and calculated fields, create your own parameters and what myContactCenter prepares itself when a report runs. Grouping and summarizing How to group data in the report designer by skill, agent or time interval, sort it, summarize it into totals, counts and percentages, and filter it. Formatting How to display numbers, percentages and dates with format strings, create styles for a consistent look and make colors or visibility depend on conditions. Tables, charts, cross tabs How to create and rearrange tables in the report designer, bind charts to the statistics with the Chart Designer and use cross tabs for overviews such as skill against weekday. Page, preview and export Paper size, margins, page numbers and watermarks of a report design, the preview with real data, exporting and printing from the preview, and the report gallery for recurring building blocks. Examples Step by step in the report designer — a list of conversations, an additional column in a template, groups per skill and time interval, totals and percentages, a chart, colors by condition, a header with the period and page numbers.

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