Page 1 of 1

summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-16 00:07
by baudwalker
I just downloaded the summary reports generator and find it very minimal in what it can do. As a report tool whether summary or not is very poor.
I hope you will extend on it as it has potential if it had a wider range of application.
Of maybe I’m missing some parts.
Anyway, keep on with the good work
Barry

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-16 11:19
by a.gneady
Hello Barry,

Thanks for the feedback. Summary Reports is still in version 1.0 and we plan on adding more features to it on upcoming versions. I'm eager to hear your feedback on what features to develop.

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-16 11:46
by baudwalker
As I said I may be missing something but after watching the video demo it seems that the summary report can only do a few mathematical and a little formatting.
I would like to see it being able to produce a number of reports in different formats. if it wasn't for the discount I would be requesting a refund. I can see that if it did more than just a simple task as shown it may be worth more.
I learnt more and produced some nice reports by watching Section 7 of you online udemy which is worth every cent.

What features would I like, I really don't know at this time. It is a bit like a child in a sweet shop, too many thing :)

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-16 14:16
by grimblefritz
I've purchased it, but have yet to look at it. I can understand, however, if it is limited in what it provides. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of reports and report options. Capturing all the possibilities is a major undertaking.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was tasked to develop a "full featured" report generator. I soon learned that the best fully featured report generator is a good programmer! Every time we released a version of the app, with a new "simple" report with a few options, someone would want yet another report or option. We abandoned the project as it was turning into as much work as the core app. Instead, we purchased a report generator application that could be integrated. In the end, we spent far less development time integrating that into our core app than writing our own, and as a result, we were able to provide more capabilities than we ever could have with our own project.

The downside? Instead of having a suite of reports tailored to our needs that could be rapidly deployed, we had to first create those in the generator and provide a simple wrapper to offer some options.

The upside? Every time there was a new report or option that become one of our "needs", we could easily accomplish it via the generator and/or with the wrapper. With the added bonus what ad hoc reports were a breeze.

I'm guessing, based on the video, that SRG as currently implemented falls into the category of "a few basic reports that can be easily deployed". That would also be in line with the SPM plugin.

I bought SRG (at the discounted price) simply to check it out and see where it might be useful.

For full report generation, however, I still think it would be better to spend development time (both mine and a.gneady's) working on a seamless integration of one the several existing "full featured" report generators.

And I agree about Udemy Section 7 and the entire Udemy course. It is the best money I've ever spent on AppGini other than AppGini itself. I consider anyone who would buy AppGini without buying/taking the Udemy course, to be the same person who would buy a rocketship without instructions - and then complain when they couldn't fully operate it!

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-16 15:00
by cesteban
I bought the Summary Reports plugin licence and I'm trying to get to know it, but is there any way to translate the titles into Spanish?

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-17 01:25
by a.gneady
I know version 1.0 of the summary reports plugin is still basic as it's a new "infant" product. But we do plan to grow it into a powerful utility, and the good news is that upgrades would be free-of-charge. Points I guess we'll start addressing in future versions include:
  • A language file to make it easy to translate (Thanks @cesteban for the suggestion)
  • Adding charts
  • Adding a second level of grouping (for example, sales by country, then by city ...)
What else? I'm open to suggestions :)

P.S. Couldn't agree more @grimblefritz .. and I like your example of a rocket ship :lol:

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-17 10:58
by Richard 500
I never received any info on the reports Plugin???

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-19 12:32
by a.gneady
Richard 500 wrote:
2018-05-17 10:58
I never received any info on the reports Plugin???
Hmm ... maybe your email in our list needs to be updated. Please send me your new email through our support form at http://bigprof.com/appgini/support-request

Here is the plugin homepage: https://bigprof.com/appgini/application ... rts-plugin

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-05-21 23:32
by a.gneady
For the record and to keep this thread updated to the latest news, I sent the following email to the early adopters of Summary Reports yesterday, explaining our future plans for the plugin.
Hello,

I'd like to personally express my deep gratitude for you as one of the early adopters of our new Summary Reports plugin.

I got some valuable feedback from users and I thought I'd share it here along with our plans for future releases. I'd really appreciate your comments and suggestions, either privately by replying to this email, or publicly through the forum.

So, a common concern I learned was that Summary Reports is very minimal and served only a narrow use case.

I'd like to clarify that creating a reporting plugin is a pretty hard task, specially that there are many amazing reporting tools that already exist, including classics like Crystal Reports, comprehensive open source like JasperReport, business intelligence giants like Power BI, plus many others.

Building a tool to compete with them was definitely not our objective from creating Summary Reports. That would be total overkill, and honestly we don't have the resources to do it.

What we wanted to do is a simple and fast way of building the most common reports that most users use, in a way that is fully integrated with AppGini, with the ability to edit and recreate them, without writing any code, or minimal code if any.

So we preferred to take the approach of a MVP (minimum viable product) where we start version 1.0 with a minimum set of common features to call a "report", and collect feedback from users, and use it to drive the features for future releases.

And that's why we offered the plugin with free lifetime upgrades and a large introductory discount. Because early adopters should not worry about getting all the features they wish for ... In fact, they'll get the chance to decide on features, and of course they won't have to worry about paying for upgrades later.

So, to sum up, I really appreciate your feedback and fully understand your concerns. We're so eager to hear from you and learn what future enhancements you wish to see in Summary Reports. As a starting point, the following are what we already received as requests from users and already plan to add them in future releases:

* Option to filter reports to show only user-accessible data rather than all data.
* Ability to download report data as a CSV to work with it in Excel.
* Possibility of creating reports from custom SQL queries.
* Adding a language file to translate the reports UI.
* Adding basic charts (bar and pie charts)

I hope I managed to shed some light on where we stand currently. And I hope that helps address your concerns regarding the new plugin.

Once more, thanks so much for your continued support and valuable feedback.

Kind Regards,
And I have to say I was thrilled by all the warm replies and insightful suggestions I received. Rest assured will continue working hard on Summary Reports to make sure it provides a great added value to our users.

Re: summary reports very minimal

Posted: 2018-07-23 16:16
by lectura
How are you.
for my part the report plugin is good, if the following is done its going to be the best.
1. give users chance to compare data in a table e.g one field against many other fields in the same table.
2. Introduce graphical representation of user's data.
3. enable sending selected data to a pdf.. user can actualy select data for a certain period and be able to pdf it.
thank you.