Reports, lots of them, at the same time?

So my attempts to get my sales representative reports to export to different directories based on the sales rep number hit a snag.  Mainly that Vineyardsoft KnowledgeSync doesn't want to let me dynamically select a report export location.

There is a way around this though!  It just takes some set up work!  I went and made an event for each rep instead of one event that spits out all the reports.  Now I currently have 48 sales reps, so the first time set up was a bit painful, but upkeep shouldn't be too bad when I add the occasional new rep.

There was a slight additional snag though.  When exporting the records to the directories they were getting mixed up.  For competitive sales reps, this could be a big problem.  I found if they were run quickly one after another is when they were getting this mix up.  So it was time to make a convention.  I opted to set a schedule for each one that uses their sales representative number as the minute for when the report runs.  Now my sales reps all have low numbers, so chose a convention that is right for you.  It could be one every minute, or the last two digits of their number, etc.  Now I have them all spaced out and no more report export mix ups.

Remember to make a new schedule, don't edit the current one.  Otherwise all your reports will still be on the same schedule.

These monthly reports are run on the 4th of each month to account for weekends and weekends with holidays attached.  I opted for after 10 am because we run overnight functions in Macola ES (updating costed bill of materials, if you are interested) so we needed to make sure the reports don't run until we come into the office and post the invoices from the previous workday.

Adding dates to report names

Assuming you are like me and you have a LOT of Crystal Reports saved in PDF format, you probably like adding dates to the file names.  After all, it is so much fun opening up files 20 at a time hunting for the one you want!

To have Vineyardsoft KnowledgeSync do this FOR you is actually not too hard, although the instructions don't really tell you it can be done.

In Event Manager in the Report Definitions go to the "Output Filename (optional)" field.  Here is where you can give those output files a more attractive name.  Remember in the events where you can select parameters based on dates?  Go pick out what date makes the most sense for your report and copy it.  I'll wait here for you, just make sure you chose one without "/" symbols in it.  They make lousy file names...... Ok, now, paste it into your Output Filename.

Now whenever your report runs it will have the selected date added.

Here is one where I do a monthly report for our sales reps.  I added in the end date of the month it is for.  This way the recipients, who are great with our product, but not all their computers, can have them organized by date automatically.