Once validation is complete, and assuming all items pass, the Reports Distribution Manger will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the selected definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row. The applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed.
The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have specified on the definition. The output folder location will be determined as follows:
- If an output folder is specified on the row, the report will be saved in that folder.
- Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used.
- Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located.
The file name will be determined as follows:
- If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be grouped into the specified file name.
- Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be grouped into that specified file name.
- Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that report e.g. “Profit and Loss – Jan-07 – 100” might be the profit and loss output report for January 2007 and department 100.
It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name. In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook.
If you requested the reports to be emailed, then this will happen in the background with no further intervention required by you.
Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was successfully processed, yellow if no output was generated or in red if an error occurred. Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem.
It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook. To do this, simply open an existing Reports Distribution Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Reports Distribution Manager menu. A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new workbook being created. You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from one Reports Distribution Manager workbook to another.