In the previous part of this tutorial, we looked at how you can perform calculations, sort data, and filter data to suit the needs of your custom report. Now we will look at the different options for summarizing, grouping, charting, and running your new custom report.

After you’ve completed any filters, you can choose to show summaries for a columns data. Options include count, sum, average, standard deviation, largest, and smallest. To show these summary columns, you only need to find the object that you want to summarize and check the box under the appropriate summary type. As you will see, non-numeric fields can only be summarized by count; all summary types can be used if the field is a numeric one.

If you chose the “Summary” format at the start of the custom reports wizard, then the next option will be to choose group-by columns. To do this, drill down through the data types to find the location that contains the information that you want to group by and select it from the drop-down list. You may select up to three columns in total to group by. When multiple columns are selected, there will be multiple subgroups inside of your report.

Next we can choose the sequence of columns displayed in the custom report. The title heading of the column can also be modified here by editing the name in the text box. As before, the rows can be moved by clicking and dragging each one to fit the order you want them to appear in.

After changing the column sequence, the next option to look at is changing the summary and group by sequences. Note: summary sequence changes will only be available if you selected a summary column. For both of these steps, select the radio button next to the column whose sequence you want to change and click on the up/down or top/bottom arrows to move its position.

When running your report, you can optionally run it in a chart format. The next step will let you customize what kind of chart is generated when running the custom report as a chart. First you can choose from a number of chart types such as line, column, bar, and pie charts. After choosing a chart type, you can configure different display and labeling options for that chart. There are quite a number of different setups, so you can always come back and change them later if you don’t like how the chart looks.

Check back next week for the fourth and final part of this series on custom reports where we will cover the final steps for running your report.