Current Problem

Currently within our Commercial applications, a user is unable to manipulate a report if they wanted to display or remove certain columns. The reporting suite has not been refreshed for a few versions now and despite helping operationally on a day to day basis, it lacks the flexibility required to be an efficient and effective reporting tool.

New Functionality

Kx2017.0 introduces a new set of searches into the commercial applications to mirror the searching capability in KxStudent. The searches provide users with the tools to select the data columns they require, manipulate the data, export to Excel or a PDF report and schedule the contents.

The new searches can be found by navigating to KxConferencing > General > Commercial Searches

Clicking the 'Commercial Searches' will bring up a menu of searches split into 5 categories:

Conference Management
Event Management
Catering
Finance
Bedrooms

The groups can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the icon:

Each of the searches will return a hint detailing what the search will return - this can be seen by hovering the mouse over the relevant search:

Search Criteria

Each commercial search contains pre-defined search parameters that can be used to filter down results:

The user has the option to save their search criteria if they need to run the search with the same criteria - this is available under the 'Options' button.

Once a criteria has been saved, the search can then be scheduled so the results can be sent to those not using the system by using the 'Schedule' button. Scheduling the custom searches works in the same manner as scheduling any standard report within Kx.

Results

Clicking on the 'Search' button will populate the results grid.

The following functionality is available from the results grid:

Export to Excel

Export the data seen within the results grid to Excel (.xlsx file format).

Group Results

A user can drag any column into the grey panel above the column headers to group the results set (as shown above). The groups can then be expanded by clicking on the '+' symbol.

Once the results set is grouped, the 'Expand All' and 'Collapse All' buttons on the tool bar are also activated, allowing the user to open or close all groups within the results.

Layout

The user can select which columns to display in the results grid by clicking on 'Select Columns' from within the Layout menu. The results grid can be reset to include all columns by clicking the 'Reset Layout' option.

The user also has the option of saving their layout which would allow them to reload at a later time.

Print

Print allows you a user to print the contents of the grid out to a formatted PDF report.

The option 'Create Template' allows the user to select which columns will appear on the formatted PDF report (This is important considering it is only possible to fit a certain number of columns onto a PDF output). Creating a template allows a user to select the template at a later date and print out the same formatted report.

The option 'One Off' will not store the template so the format cannot be printed at a later date.

Mailshot

Any commercial search that returns email addresses for contacts will allow a user to send a mailshot.

The user will select the contacts that they want to send the mailshot to by checking the box next to the relevant data row and then click on the 'Mailshot' button.

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