Introduction

This article applies to Microvellum software builds 15.6.2201 and greater and provides a reference for using the Report Groups to batch print selected reports. See Batch Printing Reports Using Report Groups (Overview) in the Microvellum Help Center for an article giving a summary of the Report Groups tool.

Management of Report Groups

Manage the report group properties by using one of the three buttons at the top of that management section.

Add

Click this button to add a new blank report group to the list. You will enter a name fo the new group as it is created.

Delete

Select the report to delete from the list and click the Delete button.

Rename

Select the report to rename from the list and click the Rename button.

Properties of Report Groups

Use the report groups properties to set up the batch printing schedule for each group. Some report group options specify that the reports in a group will be created and not printed, whereas others specify that they will be printed only.

For example, you may configure the reports within the report group to be created automatically as soon as a work order is created or printed automatically depending on the Output Type selected for each report within the group. See the Group Options below for additional choices.

Group Options

Print Reports Manually

Select this option if you want the control to create the rendered reports in the report group manually, when you decide they are needed, at the location you specify.

Print Reports After Work Order is Created

Select this option if you want the program to create the rendered reports as soon as the work order is created at the location specified by the report group output location.

Print Reports After Processing a Work Order Batch

Select this option if you want the program to create the rendered reports as soon as the work order batch is processed, at the location specified by the report group output location.

Generally, reports included in the group option “Print Reports After Processing a Work Order Batch” would include a data structure including a databand with OptimizationResults as the datasource. This includes all reports that display optimized part data.

Report Group Output Location

Use this section to set the location where you want your rendered reports to be created. The report level “Output Type” must be set to one of the file output types for the rendered reports in the report group to be saved to this location. Otherwise, if they are set to “Send to Printer,” they will be sent to the Windows default printer and not saved to this location. If there is a path entered in the report-level “Destination” property, the program places copies of the report files at both locations. The report-level “Destination” location and group-level “Output Location” location.

Report files for groups set up with the option “Print Reports After Work Order is Created” are also automatically copied to the Work Orders subfolder Report Groups. You may view those files located at the following generic path:

<path to configuration folder>\Work Orders\<work order>\Report Groups\<report group>

Report files for groups set up with the option “Print Reports After Processing a Work Order Batch” are also automatically copied to the Work Orders -> (batch name) subfolder Report Groups. You may view those files located at the following generic path:

<path to configuration folder>\Work Orders\<work order>\<batch>\Report Groups\<report group>

Report Group Name Modifiers

Click the button Add Name Modifiers to give the rendered report a custom name each time the report group is processed, and the report is created. For example, perhaps there is a person responsible for evaluating the reports in a particular group. You may set up groups of reports containing that person’s name, located in a specific folder, that the individual with that name at your organization consumes.

When setting up the Report Group Name Modifiers, first click the button Add Name Modifiers, and then use the Add Variables button to assemble a custom list of variables to define the name given each rendered report. Select the variable and click the button Add Variable to add it to the custom naming string. Add legal ASCII characters anywhere outside the percent signs of the variables to customize your report names. Illegal characters include the asterisk, colon, double quote, forward slash, backslash, ‘less than’ character, ‘greater than’ character, question mark, and the pipe character.

The variables that are available for use are as follows: work order name, work order batch name, short date, long date, time, day, month, year, hour (12), hour (24), minute, second, am or pm.

To customize the reports in a report group with my name, I would use the variable %WORK_ORDER_NAME% preceded with a string containing my name with an underscore character such as “Dougs Reports_” without the quotation marks. If you have specified an Output Type of PDF, that name modifier will result in an Edgeband report file named “Edgeband Report - Dougs Reports_Report Groups--12_18_2019.pdf” (work order name was set up to include the date).

As shown in figure 3 with green highlighting, check the box for “Create Subdirectory for Output Location from Name Modifiers” to direct the program to automatically create a folder containing the PDF files that are produced as the output type. The folder will be created as a subdirectory at the path specified in the Output Location section of the interface. This will create a logically structured set of folders containing your batch reports from the groups.

In this example, it creates a folder containing the PDF files named “Dougs Reports_Report Groups--05_04_2020” in the folder named “Group Level Destination.”

Be careful when checking this box as it is possible to exceed the length limit of the specified path or file name, or both. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. If you check this box ON and the reports in the group are not created as expected, check the program error log and shorten the location path if the log indicates the path length is the problem.

Copies of the reports in the group are also created in the work order folder, in a subfolder named “Report Groups.” That subfolder itself contains a subfolder named with the name of the report group. This lowest level folder contains the individual report files as specified in the report properties.

Management of Individual Reports within a Group

Click the button Add Report to add a report to the group selected from the list on the left. Once in the list of the right, set the various properties of that report to determine how it will be generated and printed.

Click the button Sort and select whether to sort by the report name or by the processing station.

Properties of Individual Reports in a Group

Report Name

Click the ellipsis button to select a report from the list you want to include in the batch printing group. Use the search box in the Select Item report list to quickly find the intended report. Enter the string containing the name of the intended report. The search string should not contain any spaces and progressively refines the search results as you add characters to the search string. The example below contains the string “subassemblyp” which returns the report named “Subassembly Parts Report.”

Remember that some reports are configured to work with specific database requirements and should, therefore, be included only in groups that support those requirements.

For example, some reports depend on data that is created when the work order is created but does not access optimized results data. One instance of this is the default Master Cut Report. It displays data only from un-optimized part data. It should, therefore, be included only in groups that are set to “Print Report Manually” or “Print Reports After a Work Order is Created.”

Other reports depend on optimized data that is created when you process a batch. A few instances of this are the Nesting Optimization Report, Sawing Optimization Report, and Placed Part Labels. They all display data that has been run through an optimizer and is dependent on that type of data. Therefore, they should be included only in groups that are set to “Print Reports After Processing a WO Batch.”

The bottom line is that you need to understand a bit about your reports before you add them to a report group. Open the Report Designer and determine if it contains a databand using the work order database table OptimizationResults in any of its pages. If it does contain that table, you may set the Group Option to either Print Report Manually and make sure to process the work order before printing, or set it to the automatic option Print Reports After Processing a WO Batch. If it does not contain that table, you may set the Group Option to either Print Report Manually or to the automatic option Print Reports After a Work Order Is Created.

If a report contains a form or box prompting the user for the selection of some type of data when the report is rendering, that report should not be included in any report group for batch printing. This would include our default reports, “Master Cut Report-Batch-Select Nest or Saw,” “Nesting Optimization Summary-Select Processing,” “Parts Select P2P,” “Parts Select Processing,” and others. For now, these reports should be printed manually.

Report Destination

Set the location where you want individual rendered reports to be created in his section. The report level “Output Type” must be set to one of the file output types (PDF, Word, Excel, JPEG, etc.) for the rendered reports in the report group to be saved to this location. Otherwise, if they are set to “Send to Printer,” they will be sent to the Windows default printer and not saved to this location. This report-level property supplements the report-group-level “Output Location” property. If there is a path entered in the report-level “Destination” property, the program places copies of the report files at both locations.

Output Type

Select a file output format or type from the list. This will determine the file format of the saved rendered report.

Select a type other than Send to Printer if you are saving the file to a location as specified in the report group Output Location property or the report Destination property. A file will not be created if you have the Output Type set to “Send to Printer.”

Here is a list of the output types available.

1. Send to Printer
   
2. PDF
   
3. Word Document
   
4. Excel
   
5. CSV
   
6. JPEG
   
7. BMP
   
8. EMF
   
9. PNG
   
10. TIFF
    
11. HTML
    

Processing Station

Click the ellipsis button to select a processing station. Use this property to print the selected report only when a specific station has been included while processing when you want to link the printing of the report to processing to a specific station. Set the name of the station here.

Apply Changes

The program automatically saves the report property values you set. If you want to ensure that the report property values are saved, click the Apply Changes button (large green checkmark).

Remove Report

Click the Remove Report from Group button (large red X) to delete that individual report from the selected group.

See Batch Printing Reports Using Report Groups (Tutorial) in the Microvellum Help Center for a tutorial showing how to use the Report Groups tool.