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What are custom reports?

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Custom reports can be developed for onCourse by any user, or by ish on request, and then imported into onCourse via your client.

onCourse uses JasperReports, an open source tool to create reports. You can add your own custom reports to onCourse at any time by creating them with JasperSoft Studio. It must be version 6.10.0 in order for the reports to be read properly by onCourse. This is a free tool you can download and install on your system, that runs on Linux, Windows and OSX.

The basic workflow of editing a report is:

  1. Export a report template from onCourse (it is usually easier to start with something close to what you want) by going to the report and clicking the 'Edit' button.
  2. Edit the report using JasperSoft Studio v6.10 or earlier
  3. Import the report back in to onCourse
  4. Test
  5. Repeat steps 2-5 until the report works as intended.

Exporting reports from onCourse

  1. Go to the Automation window and look under 'PDF Reports'
  2. Click on the report so it opens on the right side of the window
  3. Click 'Edit' to download the report file in your browser

Editing reports in JasperSoft Studio

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Simple changes to the XML can be made using a text editor if you know what to look for. For more complex changes you will want to use JasperSoft Studio.

JasperSoft Studio cannot be summarised in few words and there are many online resources which will help you learn how to use it. A good starting point is the official documentation. You are certainly best off trying to modify an existing report before creating one from scratch. For now, take an existing report and make a small change to it such as changing the colour of some text.

You also have the ability for images uploaded to the onCourse document management system can be embedded into onCourse reports. This might be used if you want to embed an image or logo to a specific report, however we would always recommend adding an image to a print background if it’s used in more than one report.

Importing a report

onCourse utilises a Java Bean data source which means that you cannot directly test a report inside JasperSoft Studio. You must first import it into onCourse in order to run it.

  1. Go to the Automation window
  2. Click the + button next to the 'PDF Reports' heading to create a new record
  3. On the new record, click 'Upload New Version' and select it from your machine. If everything in the record is already set then the fields within the records will fill out automatically.
  4. Add in any mandatory data that’s missing and then click the Save button.

Updated 6 months ago