I've been recently asked to alter a canned report for Development. They want the Print Acknowledgement Letters report to include an extra field that will specify which text their Word template will generate when they print their letters each day; a simple concept, yes.
However, I am not an Infomaker expert - or fan, for that matter - and am generally leery of mucking around with Tessitura's canned reports if it's not necessary. So, my standard answer is to make use of the highly preferable Visual Studio and put most reports on our Reporting Services site.
My concern with this strategy is by not using the canned report, am I missing out on some sort of internal process (i.e. a stored procedure) that needs to run in the background to make certain important updates, to whatever myriad tables in Tessitura may be involved, in the running of the original report that won't be done using Reporting Services?
Also, are we maybe overthinking this? Is there perhaps a better way to accomplish this task - perhaps even one that Tessitura already designed but is not being implemented at the moment - wherein for whatever different kind of contribution we receive, we can have different verbiage automatically chosen for the printing of the letters? Or is a well-designed Word merge letter template the best way?
Or do I need to start taking some Infomaker and Tessitura Reporting classes pronto?
Thank you in advance, Tessiturians.
Matt Gonzales
Matt,
We have made a lot of customizations to BAM's Acknowledgment process with the help of Cindy Emig in consulting services. (Thanks Cindy!)
In our process we did what Luci has said to add data elements, that the standard Print Acknowledgment report just does not have. Note: that the standard Print Acknowledgment report does write data back to the database. So you want to use the standard procedure and wrap your processes around it as Lucie has described.
We also do what Kevin has said to differentiate the letters one from another.
As you are talking about differentiating your letters. I would suggest that you start with the more standard approach suggested by Kevin. And then only if you can not produce the acknowledgment that you need without adding custom data go down the path that Luci has suggested. There is significant cost in both time an money in making these lower level customizations.
You might also want to talk with Consulting Services. They may be able to help, and keep you from having to become an Informaker guru just to make acknowledgment work.
--Tom