Administrator Guide 2017
Concepts - Reports & report lists

Forms submitted from the device are generally called 'Reports' on the magic5 web site. In this sense, a report is a single form full of data rather than a higher level management report.

Reports fall into one of three broad categories of status:

Incomplete

An Incomplete report is one that probably requires further editing and is generally one which is for the attention of the user who submitted it.

A report may be Incomplete for one of the following reasons:
  • The associated template allows incomplete reports to be sent from the device (on the assumption that it will be completed later on the web site by the user concerned). A simple example of this is a complex audit – the auditor could use the mobile device to input basic audit details but then sends the report back to the web site for further editing.
  • The associated template allows 'editing on the web site' for forms sent from the mobile device, and the user chose this option when releasing the form.
  • The report has previously been at a status 'beyond' incomplete but has been 'reverted to incomplete' by an administrator in order to allow editing or re-processing of the form.
Incomplete reports can be viewed and edited by administrators and also by the user who submitted the form (assuming that they have access to the web site). They cannot be viewed by other non-administrator users nor by customers.

When the user or administrator has finished editing a report and wishes to move it to 'Complete' ('available for sign-off'), they must manually choose an option to 'Release for sign-off'.

Complete

A complete form is one that the user concerned considers to be ready for release to the customer but which has not yet been selected for release by an administrator.

On many systems, forms submitted from a mobile device are to be found with the 'Complete' ('available for sign-off') status.

Reports will be of status 'Complete' for one of the following reasons:
  • The associated template does not allow incomplete forms to be released from the device and there is no automated action that has moved the report 'beyond' complete.
  • The report has previously been in Incomplete reports, has had all mandatory items completed and has been manually moved to Complete through a 'release for sign-off' option.
  • The report has previously been at a status 'beyond' complete but has been 'reverted to incomplete' by an administrator in order to allow editing or re-processing of the form.

Complete reports can be viewed and edited by administrators and also by the user who submitted the form (assuming that they have access to the web site). They cannot be viewed by other non-administrator users nor by customers.

When the administrator is satisfied that a report can be released for viewing by the customer they must manually chose the 'Release to customer' option.

Released

A released form is one that has been deemed to be acceptable for customer viewing, either through automated actions or through a manual choice by an administrator.

If no customer logins are configured on a system there may be no need to distinguish between Complete and Released reports.

Reports will be of status 'Released' for one of the following reasons:
  • The associated template is configured to automatically move Complete reports to a status of Released.
  • The report has previously been at a status of Complete and has been manually released by an administrator.

Released reports can be viewed by all users: administrators, standard users and customers, assuming that the user concerned has access to the customer and/or location.

Supplementary statuses

The Incomplete and Complete statuses are pre-set in the system and govern the access to reports based on the role of the user. Once a report has been released it is generally viewable by all types of user. Note that the user account customer and/or location restrictions, the restrictions of location groups and the menus configured for each user role may prevent released reports from being viewed by a particular user.

The Released status is also pre-set in the system and marks the stage at which customers can view reports (subject to the restrictions mentioned above).

Supplementary, or additional, statuses can be used 'beyond' Released to allow a post-Release 'life cycle' for a report. Typically these will be statuses such as 'Awaiting invoicing', 'Invoiced', 'Awaiting payment' and 'Finished'.

Reports can be moved between supplementary statuses via options set up in the template and by options within the various report lists. These status changes can trigger actions such as automatic e-mails.

Note that additional status values must be set up by the magic5 support team.

Report lists

The report list screens within magic5 are the standard way of viewing and editing reports/forms. These screens are tabular, with one report per row and with a variable number of columns. Information shown in each column is controlled by the template. The standard columns show form date, customer, location, user and template. Filtering is available by date, customer, location, user and template.

Note that the columns selected for report lists within the template may be overridden by the settings in configuration files.

The text search box allows the specified text to be searched for amongst the current selection of reports. Note that this is a very intensive operation and it’s always a good idea to filter the list of reports as narrowly as possible before searching for any text.

The available filters are preset within the system and adding additional columns to display (via the template) will not enable filtering on those column values.

If multiple templates are displayed within one report list then it’s possible that column headings and column data may not be consistent.

Settings exist to customise the filters shown on each report list and to specify the column headings.

Each menu item can be associated with pre-set filters to restrict the reports shown to those of a particular status and/or with any of the standard filter values. For example, you could have a menu configured to automatically show Released reports of template A for customer X, location Y from the last month. Or Complete reports for template B. Or reports of any status for any location of customer W.

The maximum number of items shown on each page can be configured.

Each menu item can have a number of options to perform actions on all or selected reports. These include options to change the status of selected reports, to export all or selected reports to a spreadsheet or to delete selected reports.
See Also

Reports menu

Reports Menu

Template Parameters

Report lists