Hi Tuan,
I am thinking how we can make this process more generic - so it can be something useful to all of your customers and give you more sales as a result.
So how about a general 'User Output Report' module?
My idea is as follows: give the users the ability to specify any number of output reports. Just like specifying events.
The reports would have any number of columns. Columns could be fixed (eg some string) or from any data item in the system, including user variables, from global data (eg currency), event data (eg event name), booking data (eg number of tickets purchased by user X for event Y) or attendee data (eg person name). Column specification should include column header text (if different from field name or title - ie Xero requires specific format column headers), maximum width (characters), data format (including prefix or suffix characters like £,$,%).
The report specification might also include who can run it (user group permission) and which data they see (my events only or all events). In the case of Xero it is not relevant to event managers but to the accountants - who need to be able to see everything.
Users should be able to select up to three columns for sort order as 1st, 2nd and 3rd sort keys, ascending or descending in each case. eg (1) By date, by event, by booking or (2) by event, by booking, by attendee.
For our purposes with Xero we need the row type to be per booking. I can see other row types might be attractive for other reports - eg per attendee (would allow output to link to seating plan software), per Event would allow total values for different events to be compared (eg number of coupons used), per date would allow website booking traffic trends to be monitored (eg daily booking total), per-Event-per-date would allow trends per event (early vs late bookings). So the ability to specify row type would be useful to many people, and the ability to group by event also.
These reports could either be linked to menu buttons individually or could have a single menu button to open a dialog box to specify the parameters for the report when it is run. The dialog box would allow the user at run time to limit the report to a specific date range [from/to] and to specific events eg [one event/specific events/my events/all events/future events]. Everything else is configuration options when the report is specified.
I think the output filename should always be the name of the report with the date/time it was run - to the second - so no two output reports from any one user would ever have the same file name.
That way rather than you specifying one report for us; instead you make a tool that allows us to do it ourselves, and then anyone could use it for any purpose. How much more complicated would that be and do you think it would be worth doing that way, if we were paying the part of the cost as if for a one-off report? What do you think?
Regards,
Andrew
