Meta File Maintenance
The engine of the Informer product is the Meta File. The technical design and presentation elegance results in descriptions of your data that is concise, meaningful, and not confusing to the user community. With a standard U2 dictionary listing, field names are often repetitive, extraneous, and non-descriptive. The dictionaries may also contain screen and report definitions. No wonder users are confused.
- The ability to create the Meta File definitions from your existing data dictionaries.
- Meaningful names that will allow users to create reports without having to rely on IT personnel to decipher the definitions.
- Easy maintenance of descriptions and lengths for display purposes.
- Links to associated fields, providing a powerful capability to drill down to associated data when choosing display or select fields on reports
- The ability to set fields as defaults for easy report creation.
Report Definition
Informer offers an incredible amount of flexibility in the definition phase of the reports. Users are able to easily understand the industry standard terminology and presentation. Almost any user who is familiar with their application data can produce meaningful reports with little or no training required.
- Data selection is very flexible, virtually any field on a file or any related file is available for selection. Multiple selections can be made with a determined variable or a "?" can be entered for those variables which are prompted for and entered at run time.
- Selecting fields to print is very easy. Simply click on the desired field and move it to the right. All fields for a file are displayed. In addition, by clicking on a joined table (indicated by a "+") all fields in that file are available, and can include multiple levels.
- Any field is available for sorting and grouping. Any numeric or monetary field is available for totaling and averaging.
- For technical users, command prompt statements can be entered directly in the selection criteria.
- A sample of the report is displayed throughout the creation process, ensuring effective reports.
- Multi-valued data can be "exploded" into separate values and associated selections can be performed.
Roles Security
Informer has been designed to accommodate organisations regardless of size. Often times, the size of the organisation dictates the levels of security within the organisation. Informer relies on its Role based design to ensure total security down to the field level. In addition, reports can be designated as public, role-based, or private.
- Private reports that are available only to the role specified on the report.
- Roles can be established for individuals or groups of individuals.
- "Lock out" role members for any Informer function.
- User ID and passwords.
Running Reports
Reports can easily be run via a Web Browser. All of the current report definitions are used in the generation of the report.
- Users are prompted for run time selection variables.
- Easy selection of entries from associated code files.
- Drop down calendar for date entry selection
- Groupings can be expanded and contracted individually or with a single click.
- Reports can be instantly dropped into MS Excel, Acrobat, email, or a U2 saved-list.
- Clicking the "Fields", "Sorts", or "Groups" buttons allows for run time custom views of the data.
- Reports include group totals, grand totals and averages.
- Grouped reports can be run in details or summary ("totals only") format.
Report Scheduling
There are always key indicator reports that need to run on a continuing basis. These types of reports are typically shared with persons at the same level of management. Informer has addressed this requirement with the use of our Scheduler.
- Choose the start date, using the drop down calendar, to begin the scheduled reports.
- Reports can be run at a specific time.
- Reports can be run One Time, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
- Reports can be sent to an external email list.
- Text can be added to the email and easily maintained.
- Selections can be exported to a U2 saved-list.
