2007 Reports

[Matt Carter]

I have the official 2007 Visio and I was hoping that I could ask someone to
find a way to convert all "Inventory" report to show not the LCD Monitors I
have and the LCD Monitor.20. I am NOT sure the difference. I have the same
fro HORN and HORN.23 and PULL STATION and PULL STATION.24 and Server and
server .65

Is there a way to have the inventory just categorize them into something or
if I can find out what the Laptop computer and Laptop computer.22 are!? I
would like to know what the differences are and possibly convert them all to
the same one. I assume the Servers could be the rack mounted and the stand
alone ones, but the CRT Monitors, should all be the same, just physically
sized different and listed as such for 17", 15", 19", and 20" and 21"
monitors.

 

[John]

Hello Matt,

All shapes you see in a document are based on a master shape in a stencil
and as they are dropped onto the page Visio gives them an identification
name that's unique to that page. So, for example, if you started with a
blank page and dropped a single LCD monitor shape you'll find that the name
is "LCD monitor" and ID is "1" (select the shape, then Format / Special...).
If you then drop a second LCD monitor shape onto the page and select that,
you'll find that the name of this shape is "LCD monitor.11" and the ID is
"11".

So what's happened here? Well, the first shape dropped received an ID of 1
as it was the first shape in page. So you might expect the next shape to
receive an ID of 2 and normally this is what would happen, except that in
this case the LCD monitor shape is a grouped shape and in fact is made up of
ten shapes. Therefore the second time you drop the LCD monitor shape onto
the page Visio allocates it the next available ID (based on the number of
shapes already on the page), which is 11. This carries on so the next one
would be 21 and so on. (Remember that the master name will always be "LCD
monitor".)

Now for the Inventory report, if you select that report (in
Tools/Reports...) and click Modify you'll be taken into the Report
Definition Wizard. The second stage of the wizard ("Choose the properties
you want displayed...") allows you to select the properties you want to
display so first make sure you've got the ones you want. The third stage
has a button called "Subtotals.." where you can select Count etc. which
might do what you want.

The report tool will produce what ever you have data for, so if you want to
distinguish the screen size you could either add a another custom property
to the LCD monitor master
(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa200980(office.10).aspx) or
create different masters
(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa200956(office.10).aspx) so one
called "LCD monitor (17)" another called "LCD monitor (19)" etc. and use
them accordingly (I think the first option would be more efficient).

I'm afraid I'm not completely clear on what information you want to get from
you reports (is it just for a stock count, ie 10 monitors, 20 servers etc.
or a db of all assets, ie serial number of all equipment) so I hope I've
helped a little with the above.

Best regards

John

 

[Al Edlund]

how important is it to have a tabular report? you might consider dropping a
'legend' shape on the page and have it handle the counting of shapes for
you.
al

 

[John]

Hello Matt,

Have a look at Chris Roth's blog on the subject:

http://www.visguy.com/2006/11/20/legend-shapes/

Best regards

John