Creating reports from scratch - Step 8 - Collations and reviewing your report

This guide is the eighth and final guide in a series of eight. The other guides in this series are:

• Creating reports from scratch - Introduction
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 1 - Titles and Topics
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 2 - Effective Date
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 3 - Select columns
• Creating reports from scratch - Steps 4 & 5 - Ordering and sorting columns
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 6 - Filters
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 7 - Groupings
• Creating reports from scratch - Step 8 - Collations and reviewing your report
   

Introduction

Adding collations is the final step of the setup wizard and is optional. This guide takes you through completing this final step and provides guidance on viewing and reviewing the report you have just created!

Collating a report allows you to collect results into different sections. This means when you download the report, you can choose how rows are grouped. 

For example, if your report is a list of all students in your school, but you want students to appear on separate pages depending on the year group they are in when you print or download the report, you add a collation to do this. 

Collations are not compatible with groupings, so if you added a grouping in step 7, you will see a message stating "Sorry - you can't add a collation to this report, as your report is already grouped." you would need to go back to step 7 and remove your groupings to make this option available.

Completing Step 8

To add a collation:

• Click the Collate by drop-down
• Type the name of the type of group(s) you want to cluster in your report in the box, then click Add Grouping.
  
  
   
• On the slide-over, set the Date range of your collation. 
  
  For example, if your report needs to be collated by the Year Groups students were in last term, set your relative dates on the slide-over to Previous term.

Once you're happy with your collation settings, click the green View report button to see your report and finalise your setup!

Reviewing your report

From report page this takes you to, you can use the grey Edit button to make further changes to your report. Find more on this here: Viewing, editing or deleting a report
 

If your report is not quite what you expected to see, checking some of these things might help you figure out what’s going on:

• Columns: Ensure the selected columns are correct, as they determine the information displayed. Some may have customisable limits and settings that affect your data unexpectedly.
   
• Filters: Filters may prevent certain information from appearing in your report. If data is missing, check if your filters are blocking it.
   
• Groupings: Defined groupings will aggregate your report data. Depending on your columns and filters, groupings may have unexpected results, so try removing or adjusting these to narrow down issues.
   
• Data set: Verify if the report is based on the correct data (your report focus). If you need staff information instead of student data, create a new report with a focus on staff.
   
• Date ranges: Check the defined date range for the report and any filters. Conflicting date settings can affect the data displayed. 
   

If your report is not loading at all or you see an error, please refer to our Custom Report won't load, is broken or not working guidance.