On the right side of the screen are a series of icons which, when clicked, open different configuration panels. These options may also be selected when you select a section of the report itself or one of the options in the popup wheel.
- Style the Selected Section
- Style the Overall Report
- Sorts
- Filters
- Visualizations
Selected Section
When you select a section, the Style panel allows you to change the appearance of that section:
All the basic style options are available, including font, text color, background color, size, attribute, vertical and horizontal alignment, underline, and word-wrap. If you change the format type to number or date, additional options appear.
Select Formula and you can build a calculation using any of dozens of built-in functions:
Explaining when and how to build formulas is beyond the scope of this introduction but Exago provides a video tutorial and help system to guide you.
Report Style
Select the Report Style icon to change the appearance of the report as a whole:
You can select from a number of built-in themes, configure row shading, and configure group colors.
Sorts
Select the Sorts icon to configure how the report will be sorted
For each sort, click “asc”ending or “desc”ending. The three dots symbol on the left is a drag-and-drop handle to change the sort order.
Filters
Select the Filters icon to filter the values shown in the report.
You can drag fields from the designer into the filter panel, then click the small arrow to the left of the filter title to see options, including the filter control and filter value.
Use the Top/Bottom Filter options to limit how many rows are shown.
Top/Bottom filters are often applied to numeric or date columns (for example, “Show the 10 Biggest Invoices” or “Show the 5 Earliest Orders”.)
After applying some of the effects above, here is a sample of the ExpressView report now:
Visualizations
Select this icon to visualize your data as a chart. Visualizations apply specifically to numeric or aggregate data, which can be shown in different kinds of bar, column, pie, line, area, and other chart types.
When you select Visualizations, the first option is to pick the chart Type. Next, specify what data should be shown in the chart.
Finally configure the appearance of the various chart elements, including titles, colors, and data. Most of the options on these panels will be self-evident so they are not described separately.
If the chart and report are both visible on the screen at the same time, you can click one of the bars and the report will dynamically filter to show just the data on that bar! In the example below, we clicked Camping to show just the members in that interest group.
Note that you can maximize the area shown for live data by clicking the Choose Data icon on the far left to hide the Data panel.
Be sure to save the ExpressView report when you are done configuring it, by clicking the Save icon in the top left corner, or the Settings icon in the top right corner and then the Save Report Info button.
Close the report by clicking the “X” beside this tab in the tab bar.
Advanced Reports can be created from scratch or you can convert an ExpressView report to an Advanced Report by selecting the option on the Settings panel.