Overview
Grouping and Sorting allows you to change the way data is presented in simple and complex custom reports.
Article Sections
- Help with Custom Reports
- Grouping
- Reducing Results with Grouping
- Increasing Results with Grouping
- Bold Fields
- Sorting
Help with Custom Reports
Custom Reports is an advanced function and should you need help, Oases Support can build a custom report for you with available data for the standard Concierge rate of $50.00 per hour. Please submit a support ticket with your requirements.
Standard reports may be found in the Report Suite.
Grouping
Grouping is using one of the Selected Fields to group data together.
Grouping organizes by extracting exclusive sub-sets within data and grouping those together.
Think of Grouping as - Show a Row Per.......
So if you group by Session ID it will show a row per Session ID.
Therefore, to show a separate row for all data then group by something totally unique and the reverse to put data together.
Example - On an invoice report if you group by Invoice ID it will show totals for each invoice, however while the Invoice ID is unique to the invoice it's not unique to all the line items on the invoice. So if you add Line Item ID which is totally unique and group by that then you will get results per line item for your line item fields.
Reducing Results with Grouping
This can minimize your data rows if you choose to group by a field where the data in that field (column) is identical in multiple rows.
Take a payroll report for example, many employees all get paid on the same day, so if you group by payroll date all of the pay for that day will end up on the same row and reduce your number of rows. If using a bold field this will add data together.
The report will assign data to other columns randomly so the staff name for data grouped by payroll date will probably be the first name in the list but the total will be for everybody paid on that date.
This will make the report look 'wrong' but with understanding of how grouping works you know you are looking for the total and know to disregard the name at this stage of the pull. When something looks 'wrong' consider adding a rule to just look at one name and then the total will be correct for that person.
Increasing Results with Grouping
Likewise if you opt to group by a selected field that is totally unique to each row of data you can make a previously reduced set of data expand.
Again payroll is a great example of this. Say you are running a report for payroll for the year, a staff member's name will appear on multiple rows, their staff number will appear on multiple rows, the payroll date will appear on multiple rows for different people but the payroll ID is totally unique per person per payroll period.
Therefore, if the data had previously been reduced, selecting to group by payroll ID will make the report expand as you are grouping by a unique field. Thus the order you choose your groupings is important and make sure to press preview after each selection to check how your report is building.
Bold Fields
Available fields that are bold will add data together with the correct grouping.
Sorting
Sorting is simply the order that you wish the data to appear, you can select from any of the items that you have in your Selected Fields list such as a name or a date to change the order of the data rows in your new report.
You can choose up to three nested sorts so the skill is the order in which you select your sorting criteria. Use the preview button to check your results between each selection to ensure the data presentation has changed the way you expected.