£3.99 for a notebook! When did paper get so expensive, laptopless on a 2 hour train journey, I thought it would an ideal time to write a long overdue blog about LG Inform. I had unrealistic thoughts of a beautifully written blog, scribed whilst looking at England’s harvest being brought in. However, squashed on the 11.36am to Stroud and looking at my hand writing I am not sure this was the best plan, and looking at the incessant drizzle I would confine all the John Deer’s to the sheds.
Anyway onwards, I was struck by a question this week we had on the LG inform group about copying reports. I realised we have not yet written a guide for this (now on my ‘to do’ list). It was a process we testing a lot during the last build of LG Inform as it is a very useful and time saving option and I wanted to highlight this again in this blog as I think it is a great way to get use to using LG Inform and practice using the functionality of the system.
When you see a report in LG Inform that you like, you can make a copy of it and modify to suit your needs. You can change just the metrics displayed if you like the layout or you can modify it more by changing components; adding pages; including logos and changing the colours used, amongst other things. This report can then be reproduced again and again as needed which will save time building any standard reports you use. You could decide on an organisation template and share it with colleagues through LG Inform.
So how does it work, if you follow the steps below you will be able to copy a report in the system and modify to suit your needs, this could be one you have seen in the system or one you or a colleague have built.
- Open up the required report in LG Inform
- Click ‘Save as’, right hand side of the purple toolbar
- Rename the report to a suitable name, click Save, and copy of the report will be saved in your library
- Go to ‘My library’ and search for the report you have just saved
- Click ‘Edit’, now you can change any metrics, component or text in the report
- Click ‘Save’ and then ‘Preview’ your report
- You can carry on editing and saving your report; or you can come back to it later or another day and edit it again, it does not have to be done all in the same session
- When you are happy with your report, you can then share this with colleagues using the ‘Share’ button; you can only use this option once you have published your report. To do this when you click save choose the option that says ‘Save and publish’ you can then share your report with colleagues through LG Inform
- If after discussion with colleagues there are things you want to change about the report, you can go back and edit your original copy and when you save this report, the shared copies will be updated as well.
So if you have limited time, why not try this process or if you are new to LG Inform this gives you a report you can edit and work with while you get to know the system.
It would be great to see reports people are building to show others how LG Inform is being used, so feel free to share a report through this blog or through LG Inform.
And now I am back on a computer I would like to thank Larry Tesler who at Xerox Parc in 1973 invented the cut and paste functionality. I did not know until I got a pen and paper out how much I replied on you when I am typing.
