To enhance your report, you can add fields (for example, lines, rectangles, labels, pictures, charts, and so on) to any section. You can also modify the existing fields by changing their properties with the Properties window, or move and resize the fields with the mouse.

With the report definition loaded into Report Designer and a data source defined, you can add and edit report fields.

You can bind three different types of data to the fields you add to a report:

The Report Designer toolbox allows you to easily add fields to your report.

If you change your mind, press Ctrl+Z or click the Undo button to cancel the operation.

You can also add fields by copying and pasting existing fields, or by holding down the CTRL key and dragging a field or group of fields to a new position to create a copy.

You can use the mouse to select fields in Report Designer as usual:

To select fields that intersect vertical or horizontal regions of the report, click and drag the mouse on the rulers along the edges of the Designer. If fields are small or close together, it may be easier to select them by name. You can select fields and sections by picking them from the drop-down list above the Properties window.

When multiple fields are selected, you can use the buttons on the Format toolbar to align, resize, and space them. When you click any of these buttons, the last field in the selection is used as a reference and the settings are applied to the remaining fields in the selection.

The Brush button applies the style of the reference field to the entire selection. The style of a field includes all font, color, line, alignment, and margin properties. You can use the Properties window to set the value of individual properties to the entire selection.

If some fields overlap, you can control their z-order using the Bring to Front/Send to Back buttons. This determines which fields are rendered before (behind) the others.

You can also select and move fields using the keyboard:

Once an object is selected, you can use the Properties window to edit its properties.

When one or more fields are selected, the Properties window shows property values that all fields have in common, and leaves the other properties blank. If no fields are selected and you click on a section (or on the bar above a section), the Section properties are displayed. If you click the gray area in the background, the Report properties are displayed.

To see how this works, click the label in the Header section and change its Font and ForeColor properties. You can also change a field’s position and dimensions by typing new values for the Left, Top, Width, and Height properties.

The Properties window expresses all measurements in twips (the native unit used by Report Designer), but you can type in values in other units (in, cm, mm, pix, pt) and they will be automatically converted into twips. For example, if you set the field’s Height property to 0.5 inches, the Properties window will convert it into 720 twips.

A twip (derived from TWentieth of an Imperial Point) is a typographical measurement, defined as 1/20 of a typographical point. One twip is 1/1440 inch or 17.639 µm when derived from the PostScript point at 72 to the inch, and 1/1445.4 inch or 17.573 µm based on the printer’s point at 72.27 to the inch.

Several settings must be set properly when configuring the desired width for a report. It is a good idea to specify these properly before spending time designing the detailed layout of fields because incorrect width settings can sometimes require moving and resizing fields to correct width problems.

To start, determine the paper size that the report is targeted for, and set the PaperSize report property (see Report Object Settings) accordingly. Next, set the margin properties, which are in units of twips (1/1440 of an inch). The margins are blank in the output, so the actual width available for use in placing report fields and other objects is determined by the paper width minus the left and right margins.

The ruler at the top of the designer has a light-colored segment whose width is equal to the available width (paper width minus right and left margins). This represents the actual region that can contain fields for this paper and margin size.

The next thing to set is the Width property, which can be set either numerically in the property grid or by clicking and dragging the mouse on the right edge of the light-colored canvas rectangle in the designer’s main pane. It is recommended to set the Width after the Paper Size and margins are set, and to make the width line up exactly with the ruler width that reflects the paper size and margins. If this is not done, and the Width is set larger than the ruler width, then truncation will likely occur in the printed output when the report is run.

After the Paper Size, Margins, and Width are set up properly, the report is ready for detailed work to put the fields and other objects onto the desired locations on the page. The light-colored canvas region represents the usable area (since the margins have already been accounted for), so fields can be placed right up to the very edge of this region and they will not be truncated or bleed into the margins.

You can control the maximum number of records to display on each page of a report by using the page break control.

In Report Designer, place the page break control beneath the data fields on the report; then in the Properties pane, specify the value of its RecordsPerPage property. During report rendering, when the number of records on a page reaches the maximum number of records allowed, the remaining records go to subsequent pages.

You can design reports that can be readily localized into multiple languages. When localized, the system dynamically reads the label master table to determine the appropriate labels to display on your reports. This table contains translated labels that can be specified with a string that specifies the desired label (the label term key, for example “SALES_ORDER”). A report design can use these label term keys so that when the report is run, the system will retrieve the translated label in the appropriate language for the user.

If you attempt to translate a label that does not exist in the label master, you should create a record for it using Label Master Maintenance (36.4.17.24) so that the label can be translated and maintained.

For Label report fields, the value of the Text property will typically be literally displayed in the field when the report is rendered. However, the system can be instructed to automatically select translated labels when the report is rendered. This mode of operation is triggered when the Text property contains a value with the special ${LABEL_TERM} format, which instructs the system to look up the translated label corresponding to the LABEL_TERM used.

System labels can have short, medium, and long versions, of which the system intelligently selects the largest that will fit into the report field, taking into account factors such as field width and font size. For example, if the field width is not large enough to display the large label for the given text in the given font, the medium label will be displayed automatically if it fits.

Note that the Reporting Framework is flexible about the format of the label terms. For example, you can enter the term for Sales Order as ${SALES_ORDER} or ${Sales Order}. The system will replace spaces with underscores and perform case-sensitive matching at run-time.

There are also some variations on this format that allow you to explicitly specify which label should be used:

Note that in the case of stacked labels, the height of the field must be large enough to fit all the levels in the stacked label or the display of the label will be truncated.

For Calculated fields, the value of the Text property is evaluated as a VBScript expression and the result will be displayed in the field when the report is rendered. One special case is when the expression consists of the name of a report data field, in which case the value of that data field will be displayed when the report is rendered.

For Calculated fields, you can also specify to have integers converted into the words for the number. For instance, you can have “12” displayed as “twelve.” The format is as follows:

For logical values and value lists, you can specify to have the value rather than the label display: