Including Data from Related Items

You can create a report that pulls data from related items in another application or auxiliary table. This type of report requires that the primary application has a relational field that points to the other application or auxiliary table. The results display data from secondary items that the primary item references through relational fields.

For Listing reports, the relational fields can be either single or multi-relational fields, and they reference an item in another applications or auxiliary data. Only Single Relational fields are available for joins in Distribution reports. An example of a Single Relational field is the Company field in an application, which allows you to select from available companies that are entered in the Company auxiliary table. The company entry includes additional information about the company such as contact info and contract information.

The spanning across the different tables based on relational fields is created using a join condition. Join conditions define the data to display and the data to use as filters for the report.

The join conditions help address many business use cases. For example, you can create a report that displays all issues for companies with a specific support agreement, such as a Platinum service plan. In an IT setting, you may have problems that are spawned from issues. You can use a join condition to show all high priority issues which have problems that have not been assigned.

There are two ways that you can use the data from the related items. First, you can include the data in your report. Second, you can filter the report results based on the data. The following two bullets explain how you could create reports to include data or filter results.

• Including Data

  You can create a Listing report that displays contact information of the Company that is associated with all requests marked as High Priority. To do this, you would choose to relate the Company field in the Listing report. When you create a report, click Add to add a join condition. In the Add/Modify Join Condition dialog box, select the Company field and click Save. In the Select Columns to Display section, select the Company table, and then select which contact information fields you want to display from the Company record.

  You could also display incident types that have related issues, distributed by developer. To do this, you would create a distribution report against the Incidents table, and relate the Escalated Issue relational field, which points to the Issues table. You could then select Incident Type for the row and Developer for the column.

• Filtering Report Results

  You can run a Listing report that displays all items submitted by companies that are considered Platinum. To do this, you would choose to relate the Company field when creating the Listing Report by adding a join condition. You would choose the Company field and select This related item filters the report. You would set the condition Level = Platinum. The results of the report would display only items that are connected with Companies that are set to Platinum.

  In the distribution report example, you could select This related item filters the report and specify that only issues where severity = high are counted.