Better Report Functions

As far as reporting, I would LOVE to be able to do custom reports. How about this? Is there a way to give us a means of writing a select query against our data and show the results? There's a ton that we could do just by having that functionality. Yes, you'd need to supply the data structure so people know how to do it but as people develop queries for reporting, you could put those in the reports list for others.

Sidenote: I've looked into somehow using the xml interface to do reporting but that is definitely something that would not be intuitive to do.

I agree - the reporting capabilities are nice but really need to be expanded across the boards to be really useful. Particularly when it comes to custom reports on combinations of custom fields. This is the biggest thing missing in my mind. For example, if we spend the time and effort on populating custom fields we should be able to create reports or "views" that pull those fields into a single view.

For contacts, I know we can pull a spreadsheet of everything, but that becomes tedious to remove columns and format and so on every time we want a subset of fields.

Also, for all the modules, the reports only present certain fields. For Active Subscriptions it would be incredibly useful to have the Canceled on Date as a column to see when subscriptions are going to expire. And so many other scenarios can be thought of that drive the necessity of custom reporting.

I've had similar issues with reporting requirements to clients. The previous desktop product I was using didn't have the reports I needed either, so I built a MS Access application which pulled data directly from it's backend database through an ODBC link.

Over the last week, I have managed to convert this application to receive data via the CSV file saved from the Timesheets:Data report for a given range. The importing function removes previous records for the same date range before inserting the new ones, so importing the same file twice, or overlapping files, won't cause double ups. It also does a whole heap of internal checks, and creates reference table entries for new users, clients, projects, activities, etc. as well.

As a side note, I've also imported all the historical data from my old system, so long term reporting works seamlessly across old and new data. Woohoo!

If anyone's interested, I can send you a copy (or some screenshots, to start with). Please note, you'll need MS Access 2003/2007/2010 and you'll need to tinker with the reports (logo's etc). You'll also need to know your way around the environment (how to get to the tables, form/report design, and to the VBA code) if you want to tweak it to your liking.

Vange.

Hello WorkEtc,

We have recently converted from QuickBase to WorkEtc. We are enjoying a lot of the integrated features, but are really missing the flexibility to query our data anyway we want. Quickbase allowed us to created a report of ANY TYPE with ANY FIELDS we wanted.

After some discussions with your extremely helpful staff, we understand that we can request some additional 'custom' reports to be added, but this is really a major step down from what we had. Any update on this?

I too would like to see a custom reporting functionality.. in fact it's really critical to be able to extract the reports needed to view business Key Performance Indicators.

(An example critical to me (and probably others too) is to be able to view Sales: Products by Category...but the examples are many... as per the other contributions to this thread.)

Just a query based page, with an "Export to CSV" page, where we can choose fields required, and define date ranges, would be a tremendous leap forward.

We could then work with the resulting output file as required.

Bindi

If you guys setup some kind of script in a google docs spreadsheet/s that could pull data from a worketc api that would be the easiest and fastest way to do custom reporting in Worketc.

gooddata.com seems great, but maybe a little overkill. what we really need is a basic query function to pull ANY report based on specific criteria in the database. then have an 'export to excel' button for those that want to massage further.

we want this on ALL data, not just sales pipeline and support. for example, i would like to see all recent comments posted by user to see staff activity from previous week. i'd like to see all todos for just our design staff for a particular upcoming week to see if they have extra capacity. these reports cannot be created now.

I agree that a basic query function across all data (obviously dependant on security policys) would be a great start to getting better reporting in worketc.

I agree with all the posts regarding added reporting functions. We would need a report for when contacts were created or modified, and also an easy report for which email addresses had bounced after an email marketing mail etc. Other functions such as being able to do queries for individual items such as TO DOs etc. would be a great help!

I agree with the suggestions above. Being able to create custom reports of my data is absolutely essential.

I also agree with the suggestions above. Being able to create custom reports of my data is absolutely essential.

If it fast tracked this feature, and the price was not a huge % increase over the WorkEct monthly fee, I'd be fine with paying a bit extra to get a rich data mining tool integrated with WorkEct in a timely fashion.

Why reinvent the wheel as long as the price is not too steep; you could then focus on other features / area's of missing functionality that your dev team have to implement. So I'm +1 to this request and +1 to the idea of doing it via external integration with a 3rd party as long as we were talking maybe <$5/month extra for the option. Maybe more if it could be purchased on a user by user basis and not for every user in your company.

What kind of extra fee did you have in mind? ;)

Thanks.

how about crawl before we sprint....

we desperately need to be able to run basic, custom reports on data within worketc. why can't this get done first??? no external data analysis should be needed here. just get custom reports working!! seems like a no-brainer.

i would be happy to spend any time necessary to discuss with the WorkEtc staff. not having this seems like a HUGE oversight in my opinion.

I agree. It would be great to be able to report the total hours per support case.

Seems since each time entry has it's own ID number, there's a loose connection between a support case and a entry ... but the fact that you can attach a time entry to a support case should allow you to just report on the total hours for a single support case.

How about an account to get into the database (direct to sql) that is read-only?

Or an off the shelf product like Jaspersoft's reporting package?

I still think the easiest would be to let us execute select statements and just return the data in a table that we can export. We can all build queries and post them for public consumption.

I'm still at a loss as to why the ability to create a 'custom' query of the data is so complicated? What about exposing the tools that you use to create 'custom reports' for your user clients? We moved from Quickbase to WorkEtc because of its sleek, all-in-one, user-friendly nature. However, we are SERIOUSLY missing out on the ability to query our data in an easy way that was used by us extensively (and easily) in Quickbase.

We have scheduled private sessions with WorkEtc staff and have underscored our desperate need for this. We were told that this was 'on the roadmap', but the comments in this forum thread seem to contradict that. Please, please reconsider. All of your users will benefit from being able to SEE their data any/every way they need.

I would be happy to spend as much time as necessary to discuss, story-board, etc. I can also take screen captures of other systems that work great for querying data so you know exactly what I'm talking about. Just say the word and I will do so if that actually would help move this forward!!

Hello Dan,

Thanks for your fast response. For the time being, I have prepared a quick video to show you the functionality we used to have in Quickbase. Basically, open unlimited querying of the data in any form we wanted. We could then save that query as our own 'custom report'.

http://cliqk.com/customreports/

Dan,

Why wouldn't WorkETC look at something like this:

http://jasperforge.org/projects/jasperserver

Maybe I'm missing something.

We agree that compared to vTiger, the reports are extremely weak. Especially for sales.

We've just had our first afternoon testing WORKetc and we're really impressed with how good it seems, in so many areas, at getting data into it... But we've got a really big problem with reporting.

We HAVE to be able to create a report for clients that shows them exactly what work we've done for the last month. A couple of our regular clients want to see a list, per project of all the work we've done WITH descriptions, so that we can all remember what happened and sign it off to get paid.

This kind of reporting is really easy in Quickbooks - just select 'Time' from the reporting menu, select the client(s), the date range, and tick the fields you want to include - and ta-da, there it is, nice list of all timesheet entries, with descriptions/text grouped and totalled by project. No cost or buy in rates being shown, with billable/unbillable highlighted. Perfect.

I've seen other report builders which are even more flexible like the Quickbase one Mark has video'd.

Before we fall any further in love with your product... please, please tell me that there is, or will be, a way for us to slice, dice, present and export our data how we want... Could we even just export the raw (unexported) timesheet data to an .IIF file, so we could use the reporting functions of QB? (Like the horrible QB timer program does). Or can Excel somehow connect via the API? I'm not very clued up on these things, I am just a driver guv', not a mechanic.

Would appreciate a response. Our trial time is ticking away! Thanks.

Hi Dan - Re: Users technical level - I don't see this as a problem at all. It's like customising views in Outlook. It's there if you want to get stuck into it. And anyway it all depends how you design the interface. If you do as good a job as you have in other areas of WORKetc you could just lead people through the process pretty intuitively anyway.

I very much like what you have done with the Invoicing, making the templates totally accessible (for more technically savvy to mess around with IF they want). This approach is so much better than many other systems we've used.

So I could imagine having a similar thing, where firstly you build your table "view" (a bit like you create a customised view in Outlook) by selecting or dragging field names to a list where you can order them. Then you could apply one of your (customiseable HTML based) templates to the screen results table to produce a printable report. Same as invoices. Simple!

It works in lots of other "easy to use consumer" software and would fit in perfectly with your existing interface ethos.

Like this: http://www.workflowmax.com/reporting.aspx - seems pretty easy for non-technical people.

By the way the XERO blog says they've just acquired Workflowmax, in case you didn't know.

I agree, customized reporting would be a great addition to worketc - I am looking for other solutions because of the lack of reporting.

I have looked at the Saved Views, and I don't see any way to create a Saved View for Timesheet entries - am I missing something?

The Saved Views are a step in the right direction, but how about related information? For example, there is nowhere (that I can find) in Worketc to see Timesheet entries grouped by ToDos. For example: I have added a custom field to ToDo for an "estimate", so I might estimate 20 hours for a ToDo. Once I have a number of Timesheet entries against that ToDo, I'd like to see the actuals vs estimate. This would be very similar to the Budget view that is under the Project view, but grouped by individual ToDos instead of the entire project.

Overall, the best option for me would be if I could build whatever custom reports I need.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the update about adding Timesheets to the Saved Views.

How do you propose to address my other comment about seeing data that is related to more than one type of Entry (in my previous post I gave an example of Timesheets related to ToDos)?

thanks,
Brian

I've been really trying to get what I need out Saved Views, but there are some serious limitations from my experience. In the past week I've attempted to do these simple reports:

Get a list of leads that have To-Do's for the current week

-- This requires changing the date range every week. We need some dynamic dates here, like "This week" or "This Month" or "Past Month".

Pull a list of invoices with certain products

-- I can pull up the list of invoices, but have to click into each one to see which products and how many. That's not really a report.

Search for invoices by "Due Date"

-- There's no date range on Invoices. We use Due Date as our ship date, and it's important to have a report on what shipped for the past month. With Accrual accounting system, we need this report showing us what we delivered, not when the invoice was issued. "Reports" gives better functionality, but there's no "saved" view in Reports. I suppose we'll end up putting another custom field in Invoices to search by? Also, I have to add a filter by "Total Issued or Paid is greater than 0" to see anything. Shouldn't no filter bring up all of them?

In my opinion, what is really lacking here is the synthesis of information that all good relational databases offer. The ability to see the combination of data, like Leads and To-Do's, or Invoices and Products in one view.

I hope that's the direction that Saved Views will head. Otherwise, it ends up just being a real basic filter lacking in real reporting functionality.

Glad to hear about the date-range selection, that will be a real help!

Would love to see an incorporation of custom field group-like layout editing for these views - beyond just the data grid.

Maybe a drag and drop of fields to arrange and format the data. And summary fields would be excellent. For example, invoice totals by month.

Perhaps the dashboard widgets will have some summary capabilities from the looks of the mock-ups?

As a past SAP and Peoplesoft consultant reporting is a huge undertaking and will be many iterations before it would be ready for "general public" releases. Internally you would have to have dedicated "Report Experts" that could manage the advanced reporting improvements. Like you said before walking before running I would suggest opening up your data structure to the "Power Users" to be able to run and save their reports, but also create a repository of all custom reports that other "non techies" could view and see if it is useful to them.

Also you could internally have experts, current users ,or third party experts create reports for a fee or create a marketplace for high tech customizations much like salesforce.com or others. I know I would be willing to pay someone to create a few necessary reports for me, however paying an extra 100 bucks per month per user would be cost prohibitive.

This for me is the the number one priority right now for WORKetc improvements.

Very happy to see you've added timesheets to saved reports. However the next part required is a "field chooser". Under the standard report "timesheet data" there are a lot more fields that can be added as columns. Basically I'd like to be able to add any existing fields I want, including custom fields, select the order, layout and sorting of columns and be able to save that view.

Next it would be wonderful to be able to group (and subtotal) by columns - in the same way you can in Excel using the "group and subtotal" feature.

So for example: we have a client that we're working on five projects with this month. When they ring up, I want to be able to see what we've been doing and where we are against each project budget. I need a timesheet report that lists all activities, grouped and sub-totalled by project. Each line would include columns for:

The date | staff member | activity | description | time spent | billable status | budget balance remaining | detailed notes

When I run the report it would ask for the client and the date range and bring up the results in the memorised layout of columns. And if I export to Excel it would export exactly the same columns and layout (perhaps with an option to retain or ignore the grouping and subtotalling).

Conversely I might want to set up another report which lists time per client grouped by employee or task or location or whatever.

The point is not necessarily that I need exactly this report or that report, but that I need the ability to mix and match any related data with whatever columns in whatever order I want. Outlook custom views functionality seems to me a pretty good example of this. If reports could be like this and calculate balances and subtotals, it would be the dog's bazooka's.

Agree with Julie and Andrew.
Love the Saved Views but for Timesheet reporting we find that the Date and Time the timesheet entry was created isnt really very useful and the report is counter-productive if we can't extarct how long was spent on each task and whether it was flagged as billable.

From a management and client reporting perspective, we really need the following fields in separate columns:

Start Date
Start Time
End Date
End Time
Duration
Billable

These fields are entered in timesheets so would hope these could be easily extracted from the database table. These would help us run totals by client or employee on a regular basis.

Also agree with the others fields mentioned by Andrew from Realise Product Design.

"date | staff member | activity | description | time spent | billable status | budget balance remaining | detailed notes"

Thanks
Andrew

I've been playing around with Google Chart Tools and it has some really nice features, and easy implementation : https://developers.google.com/chart/

I put together a GeoChart to show sales by state, with more detail when clicked:





Why not leverage this robust platform for dynamic charts and graphs within WORKetc reporting?