dbFront.com - Recent questions and answers in Reporting

Answered: How to perform a Mail Merge in dbFront

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 17:51:57 +0000

To perform a Mail-Merge you would create an export of the needed information to an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file, and use that export to drive a Mail-Merge using your favourite editor or Mail-Merge tool.

The export from dbFront can be dynamic or you can create a saved single button export with an imbedded filter or user prompts. For more details see Quick Exports.

You could also use a Stored Procedure to generate the Export. For more details see Run Procedure.

Once the list of recipients (Customers, Vendors, etc...) has been created then you can use your favourite editor or Mail Merge tool to generate the final mail merge.

Microsoft Office
Libre Office
any of many other Mail Merge tools.

An important benefit to this separation, is that tools like Microsoft Word are well known to the office staff that are most likely to want to change the reports. This means no Developer or Administrator involvement is needed to make changes.

In the future we hope to add Mail-Merge functionality directly to dbFront using the existing Report Templates. This would be helpful for those scenarios where a single-click, quick solution is required, such as ID cards, invoices or such.

Answered: Populate a PDF form with multiple rows

Thu, 11 May 2023 13:18:09 +0000

Good morning Steve,

The short answer is that a PDF form is not intended for the scenario you describe. It may be possible to get close using a Joined view that summarizes multiple results and returns that as a single field but you will still have issues with formatting the data and the fact that the PDF won't reflow.

The solution would be to create either a Quick Report, a Crystal Report or something similar using a different reporting tools.

I am available to help with that if required.

Answered: No local or network printers available within dbFront

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 22:25:27 +0000

1) Make Printers Available via Settings

In order for a user to be able to select a printer, you first need to go into the dbFront settings, [Help] / [Settings] / [Printing], and select the printers that you want to allow.

IMPORTANT: It is crucial that you only select printers that don't prompt for user input.

Specifically, any PDF or XPS printer will try to prompt the user for the name of a destination file. dbFront can't capture or block this prompt with the result that the process will become locked up. To recover you would need to restart the Print Spooler and dbFront Service and disable the printer.

2) Check dbFront Service Printer Access

If some of the installed printers don't show up in the list in dbFront then you need to ensure that the user that is running the dbFront Service has the appropriate access. To check this you should:

Open the "Services" manager and look for the dbFront Service,
Right-Click and view the properties,
Switch to the Log On tab and check the account used.

If the account is Network Service, then dbFront should already have access to all of the printers. If the account is a custom network user then you need to login on the server as that user and verify that they have access to the necessary printers.

If you run into any further issue then please log an issue at support@dbFront.com and we will help resolve this issue.

Answered: Create a custom report column

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 16:11:36 +0000

What you are looking at doing is including a formatted block of data in your report.

You have two options:

If your database server permits it (SQL Server), then you can create a custom table column that does the formatting for you. You can then simply include that column in your report and you would be done.
The second option is to create a database view to format your data the way you want it. You can then attach that view to your table and include the appropriate column in your report. For more details see: Table Views

Answered: Is there a way to combine rows that are duplicated into a single entry?

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 21:12:20 +0000

The presentation looks very interesting but dbFront does not have that ability, either on the table view or the reporting side... It is possible to build the raw HTML within a stored procedure but that would be a fair bit of work.

Answered: Export Currently Display Results

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:36:43 +0000

The quick print buttons implement their own filtering. They are not aware of any current screen filtering.

1) You can set individual Row filters on all of the tables in the Quick Report.
2) You can add optional or mandatory criteria fields that the user can fill in when they run the report.

Note: You need to first save the report. Once you open the saved report you will then be able to set the criteria fields and row filters.

For more information please see: https://dbfront.com/quickreports

Answered: Can dbFront load MSSQL Views?

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 12:44:36 +0000

dbFront works directly with the real tables because Views by their very nature hide too much structural information.

At the same time, dbFront allows you to JOIN database views to an existing table. This allows you to add extra formatted information to a table that can be used everywhere that a regular field can be used. This is includes, Reports, Exports, Row Security Expressions, Dropdown Columns, everywhere...

For more details see: Table Views

Note: This answer was rewritten to reflect new dbFront functionality.

Answered: How do I add reporting

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 22:41:48 +0000

Originally the answer would have been that dbFront can integrate with a variate of reporting tools. Since then we have decided to add reporting directly to dbFront.

This was partially to make it easier for our users. Although there are a pile of reporting tools, many require serious effort to install or use.

You can still link to nearly any other reporting tool from dbFront but if you just need a quick simple report then the functionality that dbFront offer might just be enough.

For more details please see: dbFront.com/reporting