Adeptia provides an easy way for the business users to create custom reports. In this example, I will go through the steps of how to create a report that provides Shipment delivery status along with its associated Purchase Order and Invoice for each transaction.
In Adeptia, user first designs the report template by going to Configure and clicking on the Web Form feature. Web Forms provide a simple drag-and-drop capability to design any type of report format needed by the business. Typical report format consists of a dynamic grid or a table that shows any number of data records that get pulled from a database or a backend application. For instance, if we are pulling Shipment records from a database then the table will show that many number of records in the report.
Below is a report template designed through the Web Forms feature. User selects the Table component and drags it into the canvas and specifies the table properties such as the number of columns, column names, and the title of the report.
After configuring the table properties, the next step is to define the rule that calls an API that pulls the data from a database or in this case the Shipment Tracking System. The specific API that needs to be called to populate the table can be developed and made available to the Business by the IT team. In this example, I’m calling a Shipment API that is pre-configured by the IT.
In order to configure the API call in the report, user clicks on the graphical Rule Builder and configures the logic of how to call the API as shown below.
As an alternative option, the Rules Builder also allows IT users to write JavaSscript code in order to provide greater extensibility to the type of logic that needs to be applied at run-time for the report to be generated. Here’s an example of the rule builder where I’m defining the API URL and associating the values from the API response to the column names in the report. These rules can be stored as templates and can be reused in any other report. This allows for easy reusability of report templates and rules without having to write them from scratch whenever a new custom report is designed.
Once the report is configured and activated, the end-user goes to the Dashboard and sees the report as shown below. In this snapshot, the report is showing some of the key information related to Shipment data such as PO, Invoice, Shipment ID, Delivery Date, related IDOC transaction ID in SAP, and Status.
Based on how the report is designed, users can also configure nested reports where a data value in a column can be a link to another report that provides further details on a particular Shipment transaction such as Bill of Lading, freight details and other information.
Additional reports can be managed by going to Configure and clicking on the Web Forms feature. Here a user can see a list of custom reports and can select a particular report to edit or make changes to the rules.
Here’s a snapshot of custom reports managed by the business team. Central repository of all your reports is also important as the business has full visibility to the type of information that is being made available within the organization such as operations and sales teams.
I hope this simple example provides a better context of how Adeptia provides a business-friendly report generation capability as part of its B2B Integration solution. To learn more about how Adeptia B2B Integration solution can help your business, please contact us.
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