The Report Designer gives you much more control over the kind of data you can retrieve from Focus. By starting with a base report, such as Payroll, Employees or Absences, you can add or remove related columns and then save and share the resulting report.
This guide will look at:
There is no ‘Report Designer’ page in Focus. Instead, you can modify any of the existing reports to better suit your needs. Every Report now has access to every piece of data associated with that report, based upon the database tables in use behind the scenes.
For example, the Payroll Reports already use data from the Weekly Hours Table and the Employees Table, so you can now access all database fields from those two tables. You may wish to append Employee information to your Payroll data for example, such as contact details or information from User Defined Fields. Or you may wish to remove information that isn’t useful to you, like unused Rate columns. This is all now possible.
There is a ‘Columns’ button at the top of every Report in Focus. Here you will see two sections. On the left, all the Columns that are available. In use Columns will have their checkbox checked. On the right, you have a list of every column currently in use, and in what order they will display.
The columns that are highlighted in grey text are that report's ‘Starting’ values. They can still be turned on and off and rearranged like any other field, but it is useful to see where you started from.
The text in blue after the name of the Column is the data table within Focus that this information comes from. You don’t need to worry about this, though it may be interesting to look at as you start to build more complex reports.
To add more columns to the report you are viewing, simply check the boxes of the required fields. Any columns you add will be reflected on the right hand side of the control, and will appear in the order that you add them.
To rearrange the column order, select a row in the Column Order section and then click the up or down arrows underneath. The order of items top to bottom will decide on the layout of the report, from left to right.
Adjust the columns until you have them in the order you would like. In this example, the Work Schedule and Default Cost Centre have been moved higher up the report so they are directly next to the Date field.
When you return to the report you will now see your choices reflected in the new report layout.
Note: Many reports have different subtypes, such as ‘Employee Summary’, ‘Detail’, or ‘Group Summary’. Not every column will display information for every column type, if it doesn’t make sense to do so in that specific context. Experiment with what adding different columns will do to the different report subtypes.
Many reports have ‘Rates #’ as a selectable Column. This is a special case, because instead of showing you a single column, it will display whichever Rates you have selected in the ‘Options’ section of the report.
In this example, we are adding the Rate information to the Attendance Report. We have selected the ‘Rate # *’ Column and we’re happy with it appearing at the end of the report.
The default behaviour is for the report to display every Rate, but in our use case we only require Rate 1 and Rate 2 to be displayed. In the Option menu, we deselect the Rates we don’t need.
This will keep the final report nice and concise, showing us only the data we’re interested in.
Some of the columns in the reports will automatically show you the Sum Total at the end of the report. Most numeric values, like time worked or money paid, will be Summed by default. Other number values, such a phone numbers, badge or PIN numbers will not be summed.
Where a value is a Bool (that is a true or false value), then this will also be summed in reports. This can be a little odd at first glance, but it has its use. It will tell you how many times a particular value is True.
In the above example, the Absence Reasons report will tell us how many of the selected Absence Reasons are of type Personal Holiday and how many have been set to Auto Grant Absence Requests.
Your custom reports can be run in the same way as all existing Focus reports - that is, you can either export the raw data, or generate a PDF file that will display the data in an easy to read format.
If you click the ‘Report’ button, Focus will generate a printable version of your report. This can then be printed, exported as a PDF, or exported as a Microsoft Excel document. Note that before generating the report you may wish to change the Page Layout to Landscape in the Report Options.
There is a caveat here though. Because you can add dozens of columns to most reports, you can quickly get into a situation where a single page generated version of the report won’t be able to display all of your data in an easily readable format. Focus will attempt to display all of your data by shrinking the text size down, but you may still be unable to see everything clearly.
For this reason it is generally advised to Export, rather than run, your Report.
For most custom reports, the best way to get the data out for your own needs is to export the report as a .csv file. This can then be easily imported into your preferred spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Click Export, and then choose to export either with or without the Column Headers. Selecting an option will automatically download the data as a file to your computer.
When you have added columns you need for a report and arranged them to your satisfaction, you can save the layout to quickly access the report again.
As well as the columns, rates, and positions of the columns, saving the report will also preserve the other filters you applied to it, such as Group selection or date range.
Select ‘My Reports’ in the options bar at the top of the report, and then ‘Save…’.
Give the report a name. Note that Focus will automatically append the name of the ‘Parent’ report to the end of the title in parentheses. So the above report would be saved as ‘Absences With Contact Details (Absences)’.
When you save a report it will be shown in a My Reports folder within the Reports Tree.
Report Names must be unique. If you try to save a report with the same name as a report you have already created, Focus will offer to overwrite the existing report. Please note that this will apply even if the ‘Parent’ report is different.
If another User has saved a report with the same name as the one you choose, even if that report has not been shared with you, you will be prevented from using the same report name.
When you are Saving your Custom Report, you have the option to Make the Report Available to Other Users.
Selecting this checkbox will automatically make the report available to all Focus Administrators.
You can also assign this new report to existing Focus Users who are not Administrators, by going to the User Setup page and assigned the new report just like any other report.
Note that the User must also have access to the ‘Parent’ report in order to see the Custom Report. So if you create a variation of the Exceptions report, the User must have both the Exceptions Report and the Customised Report assigned to them in order for them to see it. This is to prevent Users from accidentally being given access to data they are not authorised to see.
The Exceptions Report shows the number of Exceptions for individual employees over a certain period of time.
Understand how to get this value from Focus for whatever date range you wish.
