Reporting
Reports
All reporting is done via Crystal Reports.
Wise Owl Legal provides a complete suite of industry standard reports. Any client who wants custom reports will pay for the specification dev and test, but the report will become part of the product.Â
Custom Logos
A custom logo can be assigned in the Appliance Settings page under Reports. Reports must be configured to load that logo. You do not need customised reports to replace the default Wise Owl logo.
TODO: standard logo size.
Reports and Slots
Reports are stand-alone entities, which may or may not be referenced in other parts of your Appliance. Custom reports can be added and out of the box reports can be replaced (although standard reports cannot be removed or overwritten by end users). A list of reports is shown on the Metrics page and in the Appliance Settings under Reports.
Report Slots are how you can set a report against a particular page in Wise Owl. Reports are assigned to slots based on a page data model or the page name. The former is best used by developers, the latter can be used by anyone. When a report is assigned to a slot, the Print ico, (in the top right of all pages) is enabled; clicking it will display the report.
Named Report Slots are used for various special reports throughout the Appliance. You can add new named slots, but they will never be used as they need to be referenced in the Appliance code. However, you can swap out a report assigned to a named slot for a customised version, if you desire.
TODO: Karen to give me a list of named reports
Crystal Reports
This details conventions and requirements for developing Crystal Reports.
Crystal Reports Runtime v13 is being used on the Appliances themselves. Report development is being done in v14 on Stella.
Database Connections in Crystal
There are two ODBC connections available:
The main database (
WOL_Prod
)The logs and stats database (
WOL_Prod_Log
)
ODBC connections are configurable in Site Settings. But generally shouldn't need to be changed from their default in production environments.
Reports themselves have their connections remapped to the config settings. The convention is as follows:
Any DSNs which do not start with
WOL_
are not touchedAny DSNs which start with
WOL_
and end in_LOG
are remapped to the logs and stats databaseAny DSNs which start with
WOL_
and do not end in_LOG
are remapped to the main database
Parameters
The following common parameters are passed to every report:
Crystal Name | Data Type | Sample Value | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
| string | Used to load a custom logo: combine with "/CustomReportLogo". | |
| string | demo.wiseowllegal.com.au | The same as |
| string | larry.lawyer | The current user name who is running the report |
| string | Trust Trial Balance | The name of the report as listed in the reports in Wise Owl Legal. Note that this may be different from the Crystal Report name. |
| integer | 8 | The report id which is being run. You can access additional information about the report via the table |
| string | PROD | This will mostly be set to |
| string | ALDRINGTON | This is the server name of the machine the Appliance is running on. It is generally not very useful as users do not see this name anywhere. |
| string | demo | The first part of the Appliance URL (the demo part in demo.wiseowllegal.com.au). This contains a short Appliance name. However, a larger client may have a customised Appliance URL such as wiseowl.bigfirm.com.au, so care must be taken. |
Other parameters are passed based on view model data, ONLY when the report is assigned a to slot and the user clicks on the Print icon, base on the following rules:
Any readable property of the view model is mapped to a corresponding Crystal Parameter based on name.
The Crystal Parameter may be prefixed with a "p". That is the view model property "MatterNumber" can be mapped to either "MatterNumber" or "pMatterNumber"Â on the Crystal Report
Mapping is case-insensitive.
The actual values in view model data varies from page to page, however the following pointers should help you find the right parameters:
Most pages which show a single record will have an
ID
property which relates to the primary key of a database table.Any link which has a number right at the end of it has an
ID
property corresponding to that number.
Link | ID |
---|---|
| 1 |
| 20 |
| 89 |
Pages which allow searching of records commonly have a Name property (and various others depending on the needs of the search page).
You can view the raw view model data by appending
?__ViewModelDebug=y
to a page you load. This will show all the view model properties available; usually there will be enough there to pass to a report.
Any report parameters not mapped by Wise Owl will be shown on the usual Crystal Reports parameter dialog. This allows for a last ditch attempt to map parameters, but is generally not the best experience for the user.
Any reports viewed directly from the report list will rely on the Crystal Reports parameters dialog.
Reports in Named Slots will have specific parameters required. As these parameters are known beforehand, developers will assume the reports have them and set them via code.
Named Reports
Details of each named report are listed below. As these are specialised report, their parameters are tightly controlled and known in advance.Â
Trust Receipt
Shows the details of a trust receipt with all line items.
Crystal Name | Data Type | Sample Value | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
| integer | 123 | The transaction id of the receipt. This is the |
| boolean | false | Set to true when the printed receipt is first printed. False when the receipt is re-printed from a transaction details page. Note that the database does not track when the report is actually printed to paper (as it can't reliably do that), so the value of this parameter is a best guess.  |
Trust Cheque
A printed cheque. This can be printed from trust cheque and bank transfer transactions. It is recommended to just print the cheque portion of the transaction, no other details.
Wise Owl Legal accommodates printed cheques, hand written cheques, and where the local regulations allow electronic funds transfer (EFT) transactions.Â
Crystal Name | Data Type | Sample Value | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
| integer | 123 | The transaction id of the cheque or bank transfer. This is the |
| integer | 76 | The cheque id of the written cheque. Note that this is not the cheque number itself (because you can duplicate cheque numbers) but the |
| boolean | false | Set to true when the printed cheque is first printed. False when the cheque is re-printed from a transaction details page. Note that the database does not track when the report is actually printed to paper (as it can't reliably do that), so the value of this parameter is a best guess.  |
Deposit Slip
Details of cash and cheques to be deposited at the bank.
Crystal Name | Data Type | Sample Value | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
| integer | 123 | The transaction id of the deposit. This is the |
| boolean | false | Set to true when the deposit slip is first printed. False when the deposit slip is re-printed from a transaction details page. Note that the database does not track when the report is actually printed to paper (as it can't reliably do that), so the value of this parameter is a best guess.  |