Questions about this training? We've got answers! Post your questions here.
Audience
Project Insight administrators, project managers and executives
Description
Many forms are used in project management. Usually these are in Word, Excel or PowerPoint format and a team member has to update the forms manually. Learn how to create your own custom forms to track the information you need. Custom items are flexible and may be created for hundreds of purposes, including project request forms, change request forms, time off requests and more. This session is dedicated to helping you take advantage of custom items to tailor the software to meet your team’s business needs.
Benefits
- Know how to convert your Word documents into reportable data
- Learn how to set up and report on custom forms that fit your project team’s business process
Key Points
Transcript
Many different types of templates and forms are used in project management. These forms could include things like a business case, charter, statement of work, vacation request and resource request.
Usually these forms are created in Word or Excel and circulated through your organization via emails for staff to fill out or approve.
This type of process can result in delays and create longer processes. Forms can be easily lost in individual’s emails or on their computer and different versions of forms can be circulating and cause confusion.
There is also the problem of reporting on data that is in the form. Extra work is required to extract data from Word or Excel and put it into a report.
Project Insight allows you to create your own user-defined forms, called Custom Items, to track the information you need.
Custom Items are flexible and may be created for hundreds of purposes, including project charters, time off requests and more.
This session is dedicated to helping you take advantage of custom items to tailor the software to meet your team’s business needs.
Create a Custom Item
As you can see, this is a typical team member dashboard, with a list of tasks that this resource is assigned to.
To be able to create a Custom Item in Project Insight, you need to be a System Administrator and you also need to have the left navigation showing.
To get to the Administration options, click the Expand Left Navigation icon.
You now see the left navigation section.
Click anywhere on the Administration title to expand out that section.
You can now see all the available options in that section.
In the Administration section, click on the arrow next to the Customization option to expand out that section.
You can make the left navigation section wider if you need to by hovering on the line separating the navigation and the details section and drag it wider or smaller.
You can see all the different customization options available in Project Insight.
For example, you can create your own user-defined fields for native items, such as a Projects, Tasks or Issues. You can attend the Creating Custom Fields for more details on that.
You can also create workflow forms. These are multiple part forms that can be filled out with approval processes for each section.
You can brand your site with Themes.
And you can change the Culture and Interface labels, to display in a different language, to use your companies specific terms for fields. Attend the Internationalize Your Project Software with Cultural and Interface Labels training session for more information on that.
Click on the Custom Items option.
This is where you maintain your Custom Items and if you have any previously created Custom Items, they will also be listed here.
Now click the Collapse Left Navigation icon because you don’t need that showing when you’re creating your Custom Items.
A very common example of a Custom Item that a lot of our clients create is a Vacation or Paid Time Off Request.
You may have a business process where your team members are required to fill out a form to request time off. That request is reviewed by a System Administrator or Vacation Administrator and once it’s approved, that time is setup in the user’s calendar so they aren’t scheduled to work on that day.
To add a new Custom Item, click Add Custom Item option or you can also click on the Add Custom Item icon in the upper right hand corner.
Set Properties to Define Item Functions
The first thing you need to do when creating a Custom Item is to define the overall properties for how that Custom Item will behave. Next, you define the individual fields on the Custom Item.
So what you’re doing here on this form, is the first step, defining the overall properties for the Custom Item.
The first property you need to enter is the Name of the Custom Item.
This is the name that your project managers and team members will see, so use terminology that is familiar to the team.
For this Custom Item, type in Vacation Request.
You can see that you can have spaces in the Custom Item Name.
The next property is the Icon Image File.
If you have a specific icon you want to use to represent the vacation time form in the system, you can click the Browse option to select and upload your own icon.
The icon you use needs to be 16 x16 pixels.
For now, just leave that and it will default to a standard Custom Item icon.
You also have an option to auto number each form that is created.
The default for the Auto Number Type is None, but you can change that if you require.
To do that click on the drop down box.
You can see the various options available.
- Individual means assign a unique number to every Vacation Request, starting at 1.
- Global means assign a number to the Vacation Request from a pool of numbers used by other Custom Items.
- Folder means assign a number by individual folders so a Vacation Request created in one folder may be assigned a 1 and a Vacation Request created in a different folder would also be assigned a 1.
These settings will depend on your business processes.
Click None for now.
If you decide to use numbers, you can also add a prefix to the number. For example, you may want to prefix the number with VAC to easily identify it as a vacation request form.
But for now, just leave it blank by erasing the VAC.
Use of the next option, Enable Open/Close is also dictated by your business process.
If you want to officially mark an item as closed as part of your business process, then you can turn this option on.
Click on the Enable Open/Close to turn it on.
Assigned To
Now let’s talk about sample scenarios when you want this option turned on.
When you create a Custom Item, it is very likely that you want to assign that Custom Item to a project manager or team member because they need to perform some action associated with that Custom Item.
If that’s the case, then you’ll need to create a Custom Field where you will record the name of the project manager or team members that this Custom Item is assigned to. That’s the second step of this whole process, which you’ll see in a moment.
Once you assign the Custom Item to someone, it will appear automatically on their My Work list on the left navigation and on their Dashboards, where it will remain until it is formally closed.
That becomes part of your business process. Assign it to someone and then formally close it when it’s completed and then it will be removed from their work list.
If you do not have the option to Enable Open/Close of a custom item, and you still assign it to someone, it will remain on their work list until it is either re-assigned to someone else or un-assigned.
A general rule to follow, is that if you’re going to assign a Custom Item to someone, then also turn on the Enable Open/Close option.
Auto Populate Assigned To with Creator
The next option, Auto Populate Assigned To With Creator, also works in conjunction with assigning a Custom Item to someone.
Check this option if you want the person who is creating this custom item to also get it assigned to themselves automatically so it appears on their left navigation and the dashboard.
Note that even if you do that, the Assignee can still be changed later on if required.
If you don’t want the Custom Item to be automatically assigned to the item creator, because you will be manually assigning it to someone else, then leave this unchecked.
Auto Create System Comments
If the next field, Auto-create system comments, is checked, then if something is changed in the item itself, a comment will be generated automatically to indicate that.
You can then see a log of someone changing it from this value to this value. It acts like a mini audit trail.
Click on the option to turn it on.
The next two items control what information prints, if you print a Custom Item.
You can attach other Items, such as a Document or Issue or Link to a Custom Item. This is called the Related Items.
If you want to hide related items on the print, you can by checking this option.
Click on that to turn it on.
You can also hide all tabs when you’re printing.
Click on that to turn it on as well.
Active
The last option you have on this tab is the Active Option.
You can have inactive Custom Items. For example, if your business process changes and a Custom Item becomes obsolete you can still retain the data in Project Insight, but hide the item by making it inactive. Or if you’re still working on creating your Custom Item and don’t want it to be visible yet, leave it as inactive until you’re ready to have it used.
By default, a Custom Item is checked as active. Leave it that way.
There are some more advanced options here that are shown in the Input and Display tabs.
These are used for java script injection and this is meant for developers.
If you don’t know what this is, you should just leave it alone. However, if you have the knowledge, it does allow you to easily program in functionality that is specific to this form without having to update the core system.
The benefit of this is that you can get business specific functionality without the cost of expensive system modifications. We also offer professional services to help you with this if necessary.
For now, just leave both those blank and Click Save.
The Custom Item has been created and is now listed. That’s the first step.
The second step is to add fields to the Custom Item.
Add the Fields You Need
To do that, click on the name of the Custom Item.
The Custom Fields form appears.
The first field that is always there and is automatically created is the Name field.
This is a default field.
The Name field is normally used to describe each individual Custom Item when you add it. It’s how you will identify this specific custom item.
You’ll notice that there is no Assignment field showing. If you want to assign this Custom Item to someone, you need to add that field. That field is not there by default.
Let’s start by adding that field.
Click on the Add Field option.
Set up Columns and Tables on your Form
Remember, you are now defining what the Custom Field is going to look like and how it’s going to behave.
The first option you have is a checkmark to identify whether or not the field is active. This is on by default.
You can have inactive custom fields so that if a custom field becomes obsolete you can still retain the data in Project Insight, but hide the field by making it inactive.
Leave it active.
The next property is the Field Name where you type in the name of the field. This is a required field and this is the name that the project managers and team members see when looking at the data or running reports, so you want to make it as descriptive as possible without being too long.
Type in Requested By.
You can see that you can have spaces in the Field Name.
You can also put in help text for a custom field, so that your project managers and team members can get additional information about what this field may be.
The help will appear as a ‘tool tip’’ when the user hovers the mouse over the field.
Type in Who requested this vacation request.
The Help Text is optional. You don’t have to put anything in here but it is recommended that you do enter help text because it will help to reduce errors and phone calls asking for assistance.
Now you need to define what type of custom field this is going to be, and you do this with the Input Control option.
Click on the Input Control drop down.
The Input Control gives you different options to determine what type of data you are going to enter in this field.It defaults to text box.
Scroll to the top of the list, so you can see all of the options.
The first set of options that are available are the HTML type of input controls. They are listed in alphabetical order.
If you scroll down, you can see the various HTML options available.
Click on Help to get more information about each of the options.
After the HTML type Input Controls, there are various selector types starting with the one called Allotment Input.
These Input Control types allow you to select the data for this custom data field from other data fields that are already in Project Insight and also to allow you to enter information in different ways. For example, the Allotment Input, lets you enter a project budget over a certain period.
Since you want to enter the name of the requester, scroll down to the User Assignment Selector and click on that to select it.
This option allows you to select a user from the list of users already created in the software and assign this Custom Item to that user.
Remember, that when you set the Custom Item properties, you turned on the option to automatically set the creator as the assignee, so this field will be populated automatically with the creator.
But you can change that to someone else if you need to. This is just the default when the item is first created.
There are some other properties that you can set for this custom field.
The first concept to understand is that a custom field has properties for two different places where it’s displayed:
On the Input Form and on the Display Form.
The Input Location and Display Location define whether the Custom Field appears on the general section of the form or on a separate custom tab.
The Input Row/Order and Display Row/Order define in what order they appear in the different sections.
Leave those as the defaults for now. You’ll see more about that in a minute.
Required
There are various places that you can add or edit the information.
Required defines whether or not this data is required when you are doing data entry on the Input Form.
Required Inline defines whether or not data is required if you’re editing on the Inline Display form, such as from a report or view.
Click on both those options to turn them on, however, you should use caution when always requiring a field. If you turn these on, that data is required no matter what.
Reporting
The next four options have to do with reporting and printing.
The Show as Report Filter option is one that you will use often. If you want to filter reports by this custom field, you must check this option on.
If you want to Group By the Custom Field on a report, check the Enable Group By option.
The Enable Sum Column only works for mathematical integer data fields and it enables you to get the total on that field on a report.
If the custom field isn’t a number, then this option isn’t applicable and it doesn’t matter what you set. Since this isn’t an integer field, just leave it unchecked.
The last option, Hide on Print Friendly, can be used if this is something you want to hide when you’re printing.
Input Row/Order and Display Row/Order.
Leave it as unchecked because you do want this field to show if you printed this form.
You’ve now set all the common options.
Click Save.
You can now see that field is now created.
You can now go ahead and add another Custom Field on your form.
This time, instead of clicking the Add Field option, hover on the Add icon and click Add Field. That is another way to that.
Combobox
Now you’re going to add a field to track what type of leave this is.
In the Field Name, enter Type of Leave.
On the input control, scroll up and select Combobox.
A Combobox is a populate type of input control which lets you setup a pre-defined list of values that can be selected from.
Once you’ve set the Input Control as a Combobox, there is new section called List Values.
This is where you enter all the options that your project managers and team members will be able to choose from.
In the gray line, type in the first option the project manager will be able to choose.
Enter Vacation.
Entries in the list values section will be displayed in alphabetical order by default. But since this will be the most common reason for submitting a vacation request, instead of having it listed at the end in the Vs you want it listed at beginning so put in a 1 in the order.
Now it will be first item in the selection list.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
You can see Vacation is now listed as an option and it is set to be the first item in the list.
In the gray line, add another reason. Enter Parental Leave.
Set the Order number to 2.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
Now enter Bereavement in the gray line.
Set the Order number to 3.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
Leave the Location and Displays as the defaults so the information shows on the main section or general tab.
Click on the Required, Required Inline, Show As Report Filter and Enable Group By Options to turn them on. You’ll see later how that works in reporting.
And now instead of just clicking Save, hover over the save and select Save And Add Another Field.
This saves the current field and starts another field which speeds up your data entry.
You’ll see this feature in other places throughout Project Insight. Different options that are available when clicking save. This streamlines your data entry and saves you time.
Intelligent Comboboxes
You can have multi-tiered Comboboxes, so that the choice in the Parent Combobox, drives what values are available to choose from in the Child Combox box.
In the Field Name, enter Leave Description.
On the input control, scroll up and select Combobox.
You need to set the Parent Combobox, the one that controls the information display in this one.
Click in the Parent Combobox drop down, which shows you any comboxboxes that were previously created.
Click on Type of Leave.
When you make a selection there, your List Values changes.
It now shows a Parent column.
In the gray line, click in the drop down for the Parent and select Vacation. You are making a child entry for Vacation.
In the Name, enter Regular.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
In the gray line, click in the drop down for the Parent and select Vacation. You are making another child entry for Vacation.
In the Name, enter Bonus.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
In the gray line, click in the drop down for the Parent and this time select Bereavement and Parental Leave.
In the Name, enter Paid.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
In the gray line, click in the drop down for the Parent and select Bereavement and Parental Leave again.
In the Name, enter Unpaid.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
Now, if you choose Vacation for type of leave, in the Leave Description, you will only see Regular and Bonus Vacation as your choices.
But if you chose Bereavement or Parental Leave, in the Leave Description, you will only see Paid or Unpaid.
This type of Parent/Child ComboxBox, let you control what data is available according to your business process.
Hover over the save and select Save & Add Another Field.
For the next field you are adding on the form, enter Notes about the request for the Field Name.
This will allow the requestor to enter in some additional notes.
In this case, set the Input Control to be a text area.
Leave all the other settings as their default and hover over the save and select Save And Add Another Field.
Since this is a vacation request form, you need to know what dates the vacation is for.
In the field name, enter Date From.
Set the Input Control to be Date selector by erasing the entry that’s there currently and typing in date.
By doing this, you narrow down the selection so you don’t have to scroll through the entire list to find it. Click on Date Selector.
Again, leave the Input Location and Row/Order as the defaults and click on both the Required option, Required Inline, Show As Report Filter and Enable Group By.
Those are very common options to turn on for Custom Fields and you will turn them for most of the fields you create on this form.
Hover over the save and select Save And Add Another Field.
Now in the Field Name, enter Date To.
Set the Input Control to be Date selector by erasing the entry that’s there currently and typing in date.
Then Click on Date Selector.
Leave the Input Location and Row/Order as the defaults and click on both the Required option, Required Inline, Show As Report Filter and Enable Group By.
So now you have finished setting up your fields on this Custom Item.
Just click Save.
You can see all the fields that are on the form.
To recap, you’ve created your Custom Item and set the properties for it.
You’ve also defined all the fields that will appear on the Custom Item.
Now, you need to decide where you are going to store your Vacation Requests.
Project Insight is unique in that, and allows you set up folders where you can store information in a format very similar to Microsoft Outlook or Windows Explorer. This feature increase adoptability of the system by your team.
You will need to determine where you want your vacation requests stored. It may be as simple as one folder for all vacation requests or you could separate them out by department or even by Requestor. Again, how you set it up will depend on your business process.
You have to be a System Administrator to set up a folder at the root level.
Expand out the left navigation.
In the Administration section, click on Edit Folders Navigation.
Hover on the Add icon and select Folder.
Enter in the name – Vacation Requests.
Click Save.
You can also set the order, but for now just leave it.
Click anywhere on the Folders title to expand out that section.
You can see there is a Vacation Request folder.
Click on that to navigate to it.
Collapse the left navigation to just show the Vacation Request folder.
If you hover on the Add icon on this folder, you can see all the different types of items that can be added.
This includes the native items, such as a Project or Issue, and you can see it also includes the Vacation Request Custom Item that you created.
If you wanted to change the properties of this folder to just allow Vacation Request Custom Items to be added, you can do that.
Click on the Edit Permission icon.
Then click on the Items Allowed tab.
You can see right now, it’s inheriting options from the parent folder and that includes the Vacation Request form by default.
You can change the settings from the parent folder.
Click on the Inherit the Add Menu Options from parent items to uncheck it.
The display changes and now you can remove all the other items that are allowed in there by clicking on the X option next to them.
Let’s click on X for projects, because you don’t want projects to be added in this folder.
You will get prompted to confirm the operation. Don’t worry, if you accidently delete one, you can always add it back in later. Click Ok.
You’ll see that you are no longer able to add projects to this folder.
You could continue deleting all the rest of the Items and just leave Vacation Request forms.
You can also change the order of how the items appear in the menu.
Click on the edit icon next to the Vacation Requests.
Enter 1 in the order.
Click the plus sign icon to save it.
You’ll see the Vacation Request form is now the first entry in the list instead of the last.
Now click Save to save those changes.
Remember, only System Administrators have the option to make these types of changes.
Now to add a Vacation Request in this folder, hover your cursor on the Add icon.
You’ll see Vacation Request is listed first.
Click on it to select it.
The Vacation Request add/edit form displays.
Enter in the name of the request – such as “Vacation 2014 – Week 1.”
You can see the Requested By. It is automatically defaulting to you because you’re the creator of the item.
In the case you’re doing it on behalf of someone else, you can click on the drop down and change the requested by.
For now though, click on your name to leave it as yourself so you can see how it appears on your work list and dashboard.
Now select the type of leave, click on the drop down for that.
You can see Vacation is listed first, followed by the rest of the options in the order you set.
Click on Vacation to select that.
Enter some notes, such as going to Hawaii.
You can see that there are red asterisks next to a number of the fields. This asterisk indicates that those fields are required.
You can see the dates of your vacation request are required. So add the dates next.
To enter a date, you can just type it in. You can see that when you hover in the field, help text appears telling you what format to use and some data entry shortcuts.
You can also click on the Calendar icon and select a date from a calendar instead of having to figure out the format and then type it in.
Now enter in the date to, by clicking on the Calendar icon and selecting a date.
Before you save, look at how the form is laid out. There is just one column and each field is just one after another. That’s the default, but you can change that.
For example, you could put Requested by and Type of Leave on the same line right next to each other.
You may also make the Notes about the request section bigger.
And you may move the dates on the same line and next to each other.
So let’s see how you can do that.
Click Save, to save the information that you just entered.
You’ll see that Vacation Request listed in the folder.
To change the way information is displayed on the form, you need to go back to the Administration section.
Expand back out the left Navigation.
In the Administration section, click on the arrow next to the Customization option to expand out that section.
Click Custom Items.
The Vacation Request form is listed.
Click on the name of the Custom Item to edit the fields on it.
The list of fields is displayed.
Go ahead and collapse the left navigation again.
Let’s change the form starting with the Requested by and Type of Leave fields.
Click the edit icon on the line for Requested by.
Remember the Input and Display options.
Input is when you click add or edit and the add/edit form appears.
Display is when you’re displaying or reading the information and you’re not in an edit mode.
Usually, you try and keep them the same, but you can have them different when someone is filling out the form versus when someone is just viewing the information.
For this example, you’ll keep them both the same.
Set both the Input and Display Row/Order to row 2 and column 1.
Then click Save.
Now edit the Type of Leave field by clicking the edit icon on that line.
This time specify the Input and Display Row/Order to row 2 so it displays on the same row as the Requested by, then set the column to be column 2 so it displays next to the Requested by.
Requested By was in column 1 and now Type of Leave is in column 2 and they are both on the same row 2.
Click Save, to save those changes.
You can do the same thing for the dates.
Edit the Date From by clicking the edit icon.
You can see that it’s on row 5, leave that, but set it to be in column 1 in both the Input Row/Order and the Display Row/Order.
Click Save.
Now edit the Date to, by clicking the Edit icon.
Change the Input Row/Order to be the same row as Date From, row 5.
Do the same for the Display Row/Order.
Put the column for both to 2.
Click Save.
Now let’s see what these changes look like.
Expand out the Left Navigation.
Click back on the Vacation Request folder.
Hover on the add icon and click on Vacation Request.
You can see what it looks like:
You can see now that the Requested By and Type of Leave are on the same row.
The Date From and Date To are also now on the same row.
You can do other things like add padding between the columns because some people might not like the spacing as it is.
You can also do things like add colors with CSS code.
That’s not going to be covered in detail in this training session, but you will see where you enter it. You should understand CSS and HTML before you do any changes of this type.
You can also acquire the professional services of our developers to help you do this.
To see where to enter that, in the Administration section, click on the arrow next to the Customization option to expand out that section.
Click on Custom Items.
Click on the Vacation Request Custom Item name to edit the fields on it.
Click on the Edit icon for the Notes about the request.
You’ve seen the information on the general tab in a fair amount of detail. Now click on the Table Options tab.
This is where you set the reporting detail for the field. Table Options is the definition in the .NET framework.
Enable as a Column means that it’s available as column selection in the Vacation Request Custom Item report. Leave that setting.
The Default Column selection means that this field will be on the report by default. If you never put anything in the default column you’ll have to add your own columns manually and you’ll see what that looks like later on.
For now, check this option on.
Table Column Name is a shortened version of the field name for displaying on reports and views.
Enter Notes, for a really shortened version of the Field Name - Notes about the request
The Table Column Width is where you can specify the default width for a report. For example, if you know this is a large field you can go ahead and put in something like a 250 width if you want to.
This is just a default, you can change it on the report but by setting defaults too the most common options, it speeds up report creation for other team members and project managers.
The last option here, Table Column Wrap Text, just lets you set whether or not to wrap the text by default. Again, you can change it on the report. This is just the default.
Go ahead and click on it to turn it on.
Now, that you’ve seen those options, click on the Advanced tab.
You’re going to change a couple of the most common options in here.
Click on the drop down for the Input Label Orientation.
This sets where the field label itself appears on the Input form. Your options are Left Vertical Bottom, Left Vertical Middle, Left Vertical Top, Top Align Center, Top Align Left and Top Align Right.
Click on Left Vertical Bottom.
You could also set the field label orientation on the Display Forms. For now, just leave it.
If you wanted to input different CSS styles, you can add it.
Again, it is not recommended that you do this unless you understand CSS coding, but you will do one of the most common CSS changes and that is setting the width.
To do that, in the Control Input CSS Style Text type in width:250px.
Click Save.
Let’s see what this looks like.
Click back on the Vacation Request folder.
Hover on the add icon and click on Vacation Request.
You can see the Notes about the request field is now larger.
You can also see that the field label for Notes about the request is now printing near the bottom of the field instead of where it was before, which was in the middle of the field. That’s because you changed the option of where the field label printed. You could also put it at the top of the field instead.
That’s the form setup. Now click Cancel to cancel adding of this vacation request and let’s go to the next topic which is setting alerts on the folder.
Set up Alerts on the Folder
When you have a folder setup for a Custom Item, it is common practice that you want HR or another person or department to know when something gets created in that folder.
To do this, you can setup auto-alerts on the folder.
Hover on the Tools icon and select Auto-Alerts.
Now, these are alerts just for this folder, so you want to make sure you are on the vacation requests folder when you do this.
First, pick the users that you want notified, click on the Entity Type drop down.
You can see the different options available, such as individual, role, group or company.
For this example, you want to notify the HR group.
So click on Group.
Click on the drop down in the Notify and select the group, in this case, select HR.
In the After Event, you have Item Created any time. This indicates that any time an item is created the users in the HR group will be notified.
In the drop down for the Filter by Item/Object, you want to select Vacation Request.
You do this because you only want to receive notifications when Vacation Requests are added and not any other types of items.
Click the Save icon.
That auto-alert is now saved and will take effect the next time a vacation request is added.
If you don’t want to do a group of users, you could select a specific individual user instead.
You can add another alert by entering information in the gray line.
Change the Entity Type from Group to User.
Then in the Notify, select that user that you want to notify.
Leave the default for After Event, which is Item Created.
In the drop down for the Filter by Item/Object, you want to select Vacation Request.
Click Save.
You can now see that second auto-alert was added.
Custom Sub-Items
You’ve seen how to add a standalone Custom Item, not attached to any other type of item.
But you can also add a Custom Item to any of the native items such as projects, tasks, issues etc.
This is called a Custom Sub-Item and these are a separate form that you can only access from within the project, task or issue to which it’s assigned.
To see where you add these, expand the left navigation.
In the Administration section, click on the arrow next to the Customization option to expand out that section.
Click User Defined Fields.
You’ll see the native Project Insight items listed.
Click on Project.
Hover on the add icon, but instead of selecting Add Field, select Add Custom Sub-Item.
You would setup this Custom Sub-item the same as you setup a standalone Custom Item.
The difference is how you access it. Sub-items are accessed via the main menu for that native item.
You can set up a Custom Sub-item yourself and see how that works.
Our last step is to create a report for the Custom Item.
Click on Reports.
Click on the Custom Item tab.
Any custom items you have created will be listed.
You can see the Vacation Request Report.
If you created a custom sub-item for a project or task or issue or other existing entity in the system, it would be listed on the right hand side.
Click on the Create New Vacation Report.
Click on the Column Selection Options to expand out that section.
There are a couple of fields automatically showing in the Selected Columns: the Name field and the Notes field.
The Name field shows because it was a default field that was added and it was set automatically to show as a default column for the reports, and the Notes field because you set it as a default column for the reports. You can see it’s using Notes, which was the shortened name you entered instead of the long name - Notes about the request field.
You can modify those default columns.
For example, in the Available Columns, double click Date From and double click Date To.
They get moved to the Selected Columns.
If you set custom fields to Enable Group by, they will appear in the Group by options.
Click on that section to expand it out.
Click in the Column drop down, you’ll see that the Custom Fields are available to select from.
If you set Custom Fields on the Custom Item to Show as Report Filter, they will appear in the Vacation Report Filtering Options.
Click on that section to expand it out.
You’ll see those Custom Fields are there and can be selected to be filtered on.
All of those functions that you will learn in the reporting training are now available to you for these custom fields on the Custom Items. In addition there would be some mathematical capabilities if it were a numeric data field.
So that should help you get started with a foundation of adding those custom items to follow your business process 100%.