Ryan the report designer: Designing reports from templates

Report designers upload templates that they have already created in Document Studio into the Rational® Publishing Engine web app, where they can assemble the templates into a report that any user on their team can generate a document from. Follow along with Ryan.

Before you begin

In this example, Ryan creates two templates (.dta files) in Document Studio. The first template produces the first 25 entries of an RSS 2.0 feed, and the second template is a closing page. He also designs a style sheet (.dot file) to apply to the Microsoft Word output of this document.

About this task

Although it is possible to create one large template with multiple sections, Ryan prefers to use smaller templates for each section. That way he can reuse the templates and quickly assemble them into different reports whenever his manager asks him for a new document. For example, he might have templates for the front cover, table of contents, introduction, body, index and back cover.

Procedure

  1. Open the Design page of the web app.
  2. First Ryan must upload the templates that he created into the list of templates.
    Tip: You can import sample templates, reports, and data source connections by using the Click here to generate the examples link. You can use the following resources in this tutorial: News Feed and Closing page templates, and Standard RPE Format style sheet. If you use these assets, you can skip uploading the templates and style sheet and move to step 4.
    Generate examples
    1. Click Upload Asset.
    2. In the Name field, enter News feed.
    3. Accept the default template type.
    4. Browse to find the file, and click Upload.
    5. Repeat these steps to add the template for the closing page.
    The RSS feed template and the closing page template are added to the list.
  3. Next, Ryan wants to add a style sheet to work with.
    1. Click Upload Asset.
    2. Specify a name for the style sheet.
    3. In the Type field, select Stylesheet.
    4. Browse to find the file, and click Upload.
  4. Now Ryan can assemble the templates into a report. It is important to put the templates in the order that you want them to appear in the finished document. Click Create Report.
    1. Drag the News Feed template from the Available templates list to the Templates used in this report list.
    2. Repeat this step to add the Closing Page template.
    Tip: The templates are listed in the order that they appear in the report. After you have dragged the templates into the report, you can change the order. You can also add the same template as many times as needed in one report.
  5. Ryan's manager has asked him to provide both PDF and Microsoft Word output, so Ryan selects these options.
  6. Ryan wants to apply the style sheet to the Microsoft Word output, so he selects the *.dot style sheet under the Microsoft Word check box.
  7. Ryan names the report Daily News and saves the report. He leaves the Make available for document generation check box cleared, because he is not yet ready to share the report with his team.
    Report created from 2 templates
  8. Ryan wants to quickly test the document before he shares the report with his team.
    1. Click Back to design to return to the Design page.
    2. Click the Reports tab on the Design page. The name of the report is appended with [Draft], because it has not been made available to end users yet.
    3. In the Actions column for the report that you want, select the Preview Document icon Preview document.
    4. Ryan is prompted to associate a data source connection with the report. He wants to use an RSS feed from Jazz™.net and clicks the Don't see a connection? Create one link.
      1. Enter a title and description for the feed.
      2. Add the URL to the data source. This example uses RSS feeds so Ryan enters https://jazz.net/library/rss/.
      3. This particular data source is publicly accessible so Ryan leaves the authentication fields blank.
      4. Save the connection.
      Note: Ryan could also have defined the data source connections before he created any reports.
    5. In the Connection list, Ryan selects the Jazz.net connection that he just created and clicks Preview to preview the document.
      Note: The Closing Page example template prompts for a value for the endingTitle variable. Enter some text such as End of Document and click Next.
      Selecting a data source connection
      Preview shows the first 10 records from each query and Generate creates the document with all the records from each query.
    6. When the job finishes, click Download Documents Download documents in the Status column.
      Previewing the document
    7. Ryan is prompted to open or save the .zip file. He opens it to check the contents.
    8. He is satisfied with the generated document, so he shares the report with his team by clicking Edit Report Edit report in the Edit column.
    9. Ryan selects the Make available for document generation check box and clicks Update. Now the report is no longer in draft state and Susan can generate a document from this report.

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