The first and most important stage of creating a report is to determine what the report should look like when it is finished. This step is often ignored which leads to a great deal of wasted time and effort during the creation of the report. Before you touch a keyboard you should consider factors such as:
- What will the report be used for and who will it be used by?
- What fields should be included in the report?
- What headings should be used?
- Should any totals be included?
- What parameters should report be filtered by?
Taking these factors into consideration you can produce a hand-drawn sketch which can be used for guidance as you create the report.
A Case Study
Your manager has asked for a report that he can produce at the start of the week that gives him a brief listing of the outstanding work for each department. He would like to know:
- What jobs are to be done.
- When they are due to start.
- How long they will take.
The first stage of creating this report is to go through the design process to determine exactly what kind of report you will be creating.
What will the report be used for and who will it be used by?
This is the most important consideration in designing a report. In this case it will be used as an overview of the outstanding work for each department for perusal by a manager. Therefore it should probably be a fairly simple report with the minimum amount of detail required for the report to be meaningful.
What fields should be included in the report?
The report requires a basic list of outstanding Work Orders, so the minimum list of fields that would be required to make the list meaningful would be:
- The Work Order Number.
- The Asset that the Work order applies to.
- A Description of the Work Order.
The manager also requires the duration of each job and when it is due to start, so you would include the Work Order's "Estimated Duration" and its "Due Start Date". Because he wants to know what work is outstanding for each department, you would also include the Work Order's Department in the report.
What headings should be used?
Because the report is to provide a list of the outstanding work for each department, it would be useful to have the Department as a heading to separate the Work Orders for each department.
Should any totals be included?
If there are any calculations that can be included in the report to make it more meaningful to the user then you should include them. In this case the manager is interested in the backlog of work for each department, so a total of the "Estimated Duration" for each department would be useful.
What parameters should the report be filtered by?
In this case because the manager is after the list of outstanding work for the departments, "Department"should be used as a parameter so that the report can be produced for a single department.
Additionally, since the report is to list only outstanding Work Orders, closed and cancelled Work Orders should be excluded from the report.
Creating a Sketch of the Report
After you have gone through the previous process you should create a sample of the report that you will be producing. This can be done in excel, or as a handwritten sketch, or any other method that provides you with a visual representation of what the report will look like. You do this for two reasons:
- The sample can be provided to the end user of the report to ensure that you are creating the report that he has asked for.
- The sample can be used as a "road map" as you create the report.
A Handwritten Report Design