Crystal Reports: Change Column Order

It's generally true that the more information we include in our reports, the more useful they are for decision making. It's generally, but not always true, because:

• Information that is not relevant detracts from the point of the report.
• Information overload produces a near hypnotic state for most people; their eyes glaze over or they just don't even try to read the report.
• Minor details can occlude major ones.

So the key is to include more of the information that an executive or manager needs for purpose of making a decision. Generally, the report will be missing some of this information as it's either not available from the data or it's just not derived from existing data. Where you can fill in those holes, more information is usually better.

A particular type of information deficit is a situation in which trending is dropped. For example, you probably receive a small report from your electric utility showing you your monthly usage. These usually show you a 12-month window, so you can visually "graph" and entire year at a glance.

Sometimes, a business report is missing information due to calendar transitions; it has dropped the trend. An executive who might like to see the trend of quality variations for the year at a glance now suddenly can't do that just because the year has started over.

This is noticeable. And it's noticeable because all year long that trend has been building and now suddenly it's gone. Near the end of a calendar year, a monthly or quarterly summary of some key measures will be very useful. But that January to December report with all those monthly columns loses many columns when you run it next year in January or February.

It is more useful to have a report with a rolling 12 months, so you get that "full set of data" trending that helps an executive make informed decisions instead of guesses based on a snapshot in time.

Below is a quarterly report example. While this does solve the problem just discussed, we can improve the report with a couple of minor changes.

While it might be easy to have the most recent column on the left, many interpret the information more easily if the columns are in successive periods.

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Another decision is what to do with the current period. This period is not yet completed, so it could be argued that it is less confusing to not have that column. That would work fine for end of the period reports. But you could also create a daily reporting regime with a “this period to date” column. It could highlight if the period is proceeding well or is behind target.

The total column in the report above is the total of the rolling 4 intact columns. So it should really be beside the Qtr 1 or Qtr 4 column rather than being adjacent to a column that is not included in the calculation.

It is more difficult to compare non adjacent columns, so if we want the incomplete period to compare with the other quarters, it makes the most sense to actually have the total column first, then the rolling quarters, and finally how this period is doing so far this month.

Click to enlarge