Managing Templates
Starting with the QAD Enterprise Applications 2010 release, the QAD standard reports included with the product use one of the following templates:
• Active_Template_Landscape —the template typically used by QAD standard reports with landscape orientation.
• Active_Template_Portrait — the template typically used by QAD standard reports with portrait orientation.
Additionally, four QAD standard templates are included:
• QAD_Standard_Template_A4_Landscape — the QAD standard template for the A4 (210 x 297 mm, or 8.27 x 11.69 inches) paper size with landscape orientation.
• QAD_Standard_Template_A4_Portrait — the QAD standard template for the A4 paper size with portrait orientation.
• QAD_Standard_Template_Letter_Landscape — the QAD standard template for the Letter (8.5 x 11 inches) paper size with landscape orientation.
• QAD_Standard_Template_Letter_Portrait — the QAD standard template for the Letter paper size with portrait orientation.
As shipped, the contents of Active_Template_Landscape are identical to QAD_Standard_Template_Letter_Landscape, and the contents of Active_Template_Portrait are identical to QAD_Standard_Template_Letter_Portrait. If template customizations are desired, they can be done in the Active templates (which the QAD reports reference), and the original QAD_ templates should be kept unmodified in case any changes might need to be rolled back.
Careful management of these templates is highly recommended.
Template Modification Recommendations
The Active_Template_Landscape and Active_Template_Portrait are used by the QAD standard reports as their templates. Modifying these two active templates will in turn modify the format of all the reports that use these templates; such changes will take effect in the system as soon as any template changes are saved. Using Active_Template_Landscape and Active_Template_Portrait as your active templates gives you a powerful way to make a change to the format of many reports all at once.
When upgrades are installed for the Reporting Framework, the QAD-shipped templates will generally get over-written.
Before you modify the Active templates, QAD recommends that you make backup copies of them by exporting them using the Template Designer’s Export function. You can specify the directory to which you want to export the templates from the Export Template window. QAD recommends that these files be backed up or version controlled.
As an alternative to making direct changes to the Active templates, you can also replace an Active template with some other template. For example, the default Active_Template_Portrait is based on QAD_Standard_Template_Letter_Portrait, which has the 8.5 x 11 inch paper size. If you want all QAD standard reports to use the A4 paper size, you can replace Active_Template_Portrait with QAD_Standard_Template_A4_Portrait. To do so, first save a copy of the current Active_Template_Portrait by exporting it. Next, open QAD_Standard_Template_A4_Portrait and save it as Active_Template_Portrait.
QAD discourages direct modification of the Active templates in the Template Designer because as soon as those changes are saved, they will affect all the QAD standard reports without giving the designer a chance to test the template changes. Instead, QAD recommends that you make a copy of the template that you want to change, give the copy a new name, and then modify the copy and test it with a test report. Once the changes have been tested and are satisfactory, the copied report can be saved as the name of original template, at which point the changes will effectively be rolled out to the reports in the live system.
Upgrading and Templates
When you upgrade to a new version of the software, after the QAD Enterprise Applications 2010 release, you should first be sure to export and save the templates you are using, especially the two Active templates (Active_Template_Portrait and Active_Template_Landscape). This way your customized versions can be re-imported if the upgrade overwrites these templates.