If you wish to save your changes to a Dolphin default report, follow the process below to copy the report and you will be able to further amend the report as required.
Step 1 - Check your permissions
To copy reports, go to the security profile linked to your BMM user login and check that these two settings are selected in the Roles/Profiles tab: Can Manage Access Profiles and Can change profile queries.
If you cannot access your security profile, ask your Dolphin administrator to follow the above mentioned steps for you.
Step 2 - Copy the report
Go to Reports > Advanced Reports > select the report you would like to create another version of > select the Copy button.
The name of the copied report by default is made of its the original name and the (Copy) tag afterward. For example: Folder Activity Report (Copy).
Newly copied reports are added to the advanced reports list and also copied over to standard reports. Although, filters with more advanced features (such as an OR separator) will not be visible within standard reports.
Please note that the new report will not be saved until you select the Save button.
Step 3 - Customise the report
There are several ways in which you can customise the copied report to fit your needs.
First of all, select the report in the Reports grid and then click on the Retrieve button on the right-hand side to display the below dialog:
In the Add Query dialog, follow these steps:
Report Name: type a meaningful name for the report. Each report will be named using the Dolphin system terminology, but you can rename the report in a way that is meaningful to your business. For example, if you run the folder activity report to check the number of bookings over the last 7 days, you could rename the report Last 7 days bookings.
Report Type: each Dolphin report belongs to a report type (check here for a short description of each Dolphin report type). However, it is very common for Dolphin customers to create their own report types to group reports by department or by user name. For example, if you copy a bunch of reports that will be used by the accounts team, it makes sense to group them all under a report type called Accounts.
Enter the new report type name in this field and as soon as you save the report, the new report type will be visible from the Report Type dropdown.
Report Title: this is the title that appears at the top of the printed report. It is very useful to customise it, especially if the receiver is not familiar with the Dolphin terminology or even if you wanted to give it a title in a foreign language. The report title could be the same as the report name or slightly different, but it's important that it makes sense to the people that will look at it. After you enter the report title in this field, select the OK button and then the Save button to save the changes made to the report.
Description: it is very important to keep the original description of the report because it will remind you what report you copied and also of its specification. Sometimes you can find very useful hints within the report description, particularly for accounting or financial reports.
However, it is also very important that you add your own description so that you and your staff will remember what is the purpose of the report you copied. This is a very useful trick especially if you create multiple versions of the same report. For example, you might copy the folder activity report twice: one version to check the number of bookings and commission projection over the last 7 days and another one to see how many bookings were made per destination in the last 30 days. In this scenario, it is useful to explain the purpose of the report in the description box.
The end result would be something like this:
Note: some fields in the Add Query window will not be accessible by advanced reports users.
These fields only become available when the report designer settings have been activated by the
Dolphin Dynamics Support Team.
Don't forget that once you copy a report, you can also customise the list of where clauses and add variable or constant values that will be saved with the report.
Step 4 - Save the report
Make sure you select the OK button in the Add Query dialog and then the Save button in the Advanced Reports dialog.
Step 5 - Control who has access to each report
There are hundreds of default reports to start with. If you start copying and customising the default reports, the number of available reports in the BMM will increase. This might make it quite challenging for users to find the report they need to run.
To overcome this issue, you can create a report access profile that can be associated to a security profile (which might be linked to several users) or to a specific user.
To follow the below steps, you will need to have higher security permissions. If you realise that you don't have access to this area of the system, ask your Dolphin administrator.
To create a report access profile you need to go to Options > Access Profiles > Report Access > Add > the Add Report Access Permissions dialog displays:
Profile Name: enter a meaningful name for this access profile. This could be either the name of the team or the department or a person's name. You will need to select the correct report access profile to associate it to a security profile or user so the access profile name must be meaningful.
The Name column shows the list of all the reports that exist in your database.
The Avail column allows you to select the report/s that will be visible to the users linked to this report profile access, in both standard and advanced reports.
The option selected in the User Filter column allows you to decide if the data included in the report are based on folders created by the user only or by all users. The other options displayed in this dropdown are rarely used.
Select the OK button to save this report access profile and then close the Report Access Profiles dialog.
To link a report access profile to a security profile, go to Options > Access Profiles > Security Profiles > retrieve the relevant security profile > go to the Roles/Profiles tab > in the Report Access field type the name of the report access profile or search for it:
To link a report access to a user only, go to Options > User Security > retrieve the relevant user security> go to the User Security tab > in the Report Access field type the name of the report access profile or search for it:
Note that the report access profile linked to the user supersedes the report access profile in the security profile linked to the user (should a user have both).
Do you want to know more about Dolphin reports? Login and check the below articles:
How to configure where clauses and constant values
How to locate customers abroad
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