EMI Ann
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Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.
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Wow! Such a firestorm I've started! Admittedly, I don't know the quirks of TAS - a code poet I am not. I do agree with the one module at a time thing, and finding what info lives where is the hard part for the user. However, there is already a partial build on a customizable report writing program in S-SO-O-J and in S-SA-M. The architecture already exists in system. When you use those writers, though, you are given a short list of primary sort parameters that were selected by whomever using whatever logic path had been agreed upon at the time. Open that up wider, and let the users select what they want from the get-go. Imagine, if you will, a page of columns and rows. First column lists perhaps 25 fields ( a number I pulled out of my nose). Some are data fields such as PO number, some are optionables such as date brackets. Second column lets you put an X next to the one you want to have be the primary sort parameter. Third column lets you put an X next to the one you want to be the second sort parameter. Fourth column lets you choose print order on the report by entering numbers in the rows of the fields you want. Maybe you'll want 9 items on one report, and 6 on another. You get to choose. Test run, selecting portrait or landscape format. Tweak, save and name. Since there are already reports in Evo that are "written in stone" as well as semi-customizable ones, the machinery for sorting and compiling the data is already there. To use a manufacturing analogy, the bowl feeders and chutes are already there. Let us fill the bowls we want with what we want and point the chutes where we want them to go. Glad to see such lively conversation on this topic! Ideas are the seeds from which great things grow.
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