reporting – CorbiNet Blog

In my CONNECTIONS2019 presentation, I showed how I use SSRS to create “Pretty Print” versions of myEvolv Treatment Plan components to use as a handout for treatment plan meetings that can be accessed by clicking a URL variable on the treatment plan itself. Several people asked me to share the method and specifically how to do the JavaScript string concatenation, which can be used in many other places.

JavaScript Strings

In JavaScript, strings are any text characters inside of a single or double quote.

var myString = "Hello world.";

You can use concatenation to “glue” strings together. In JavaScript, the concatenation operator is + , just like adding numbers together.

var string1 = "Hello world.";
var string2 = "How are you?";
var newString = string1 + string2;

The value of newString would be Hello world.How are you? Notice that There are no spaces between the sentences because I didn’t include them in the strings.

If you have added a URL variable to a form, you have already used a JavaScript string because you probably entered a default value like this:

'http://www.example.com'

This created a static URL that will always point to example.com every time the form is opened in myEvolv. Using JavaScript variables and string concatenation, you can create dynamic URLs that will be unique to a client, event, staff, or any other things you can come up with and these can be very useful for making myEvolv more user-friendly and effective.

“Pretty Print” Reports

At my agency, we find that the default printouts for things like Treatment Plans are long and difficult to read, especially for people who are not using myEvolv day-to-day. When treatment teams get together to meet about the treatment plan with the client and family members, we were printing copies of the treatment plan to share at the meeting.

Through meeting with the staff in those meetings, we determined that the main focus was to use these printouts to review the component pieces of the treatment plans, so why not come up with a way to just generate a one-page print-friendly list of Goals, Objectives and Methods from the current plan?

I was able to accomplish this using our SSRS Report Server by creating a report that would pull in all of the service_details for a specific plan and displaying them neatly.

The SSRS Web Portal would allow staff to access the report where I could have added parameters that would allow the staff to lookup a client and select the plan they were looking to print this report for. But it would be easier if they could just click a link and have the report generate for the plan they clicked the link from automatically.

Dynamic URL to SSRS Report

Query Strings

SSRS allows you to pass report parameters through query strings. You may have seen these in web URLs that you have browsed:

http://www.example.com/search?search_term=balloon%20animals&limit=20

The first section of the URL directs you to a search endpoint

http://www.example.com/search

The ? starts the query string and then the parameters and their values are listed. In this case, the search_term is “balloon animals” and we only want it to return (limit) 20 results.

We can do the same thing with SSRS. In the case of this Pretty Print example, I only need one parameter, event_log_id. My query includes a WHERE clause

WHERE event_log.event_log_id = @event_log_id

This creates a parameter called event_log_id that the report is expecting in order to run.

The event_log_id of the Treatment Plan is on the treatment plan so we can use string concatenation to glue the report endpoint and the parameter name to a variable on the plan that holds the value of the event_log_id.

URL Variables

The URL form field type is used to create a clickable button on a form that will launch a new web browser window pointed to the URL value of the field.

You could add the field as a user-defined field and that might make sense if you are doing something like collecting a URL from someone. For example, if you wanted to get the website of an organization. In that case, you want to store the URL in the database.

In this situation, however, we don’t need to store anything in the database. We just want to generate the URL and create the button every time an event is opened, so a variable is perfect in this case. I added mine like this:

The URL field displays the URL in a ext box and then has a clickable globe icon to the right of it. I don’t like to display the url itself because they can sometimes be very long and look terrible so I put 1 in display size. That still shows the first few characters of the URL but that’s the smallest you can get it. As of this writing, the display size does not seem to effect how it looks in NX. I also make my URL variables not modifiable.

Default Value

Now for the JavaScript. We have our SSRS Web portal setup to work on the agency Network only so the url is

http://ssrs:8080/reports

The specific report I have created is located in the Pretty Print Reports directory and is called Plan Components:

http://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Pretty%20Print%20Reports/Plan%20Components

The %20 all stand for spaces

I also know that I have one parameter, event_log_id, so that is going to be a static part of the url:

http://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Pretty%20Print%20Reports/Plan%20Components?event_log_id=

And now all I have to do is concatenate the event_log_id to the end of the url and I will have my link. myEvolv stores the event_log_id of any given event in the variable keyValue, so I can just use that. So in the default value for the URL variable, I will use the following code:

var url = 'http://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Pretty%20Print%20Reports/Plan%20Components?event_log_id='; url += keyValue; url;

Explanation: I created a variable called url and gave it the string value of the static portion of my report URL. Then I concatenated the event_log_id of whatever event the form opens with to the end of the string using the myEvolv variable keyValue.

The url variable now holds a value like:

https://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Pretty%20Print%20Reports/Plan%20Components?event_log_id=2542C1F3-2D25-4840-97B3-A17C86652E9F

In the last line, I simply output the value of url, which becomes the default value of the URL variable.

One More Brief Example

To give an idea of a slightly more complicated string concatenation for a URL variable, another place where I use this is on our Monthly Summary events. I have created a dynamic URL variable that will launch an SSRS report where the parameters are the client’s people_id and then a date range. The SSRS Report then pulls in the specified daily notes for that client between those dates so that the summary writers can easily review the months’ activities.

Here’s the code for the default value:

var url = 'http://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Raise%20the%20Age%20Reports/Action%20Step%20Specific%20Notes?people_id='; url += getElementFromXML(formXML,'people_id'); url += '&start_date='; url += getElementFromXML(formXML,'udf_summary_start'); url += '&end_date='; url += getElementFromXML(formXML,'udf_summary_end'); url;

This is pretty similar to the first example but a few difference. One, instead of using a myEvolv variable, I am just concatenating values from the form directly to the string: people_id and two user-defined date fields, udf_summary_start and udf_summary_end.

I am using getElementFromXML() to get the value from the form’s definition rather than the rendered form elements. This works well when you have default values in the form. If you do not, then those values may be null until filled in on the form.

In that case, you might want to go a different route and use similar code to the On Change field of every form element that is used in the URL with t

var url = 'http://ssrs:8080/reports/report/Raise%20the%20Age%20Reports/Action%20Step%20Specific%20Notes?people_id='; url += getFormElement('people_id'); url += '&start_date='; url += getFormElement('udf_summary_start'); url += '&end_date='; url += getFormElement('udf_summary_end'); setFormElement('monthly_summary_report_url', url);

***In this example, my URL’s variable name is monthly_summary_report_url

What this does is any time the client is switched on the form or the start and end dates are changed, a new URL is generated and entered into the URL variable as the value.

In either case, you can see that I am alternating between concatenating static parts of the query string with they dynamic parts to make a more complicated query string.

I was asked by a reader about how I figure out the form_line_id assigned to elements on a form. There are a few ways, but this is probably the easiest and it provides a tool that can be used over and over again. However, since it does require writing a custom report, I figured I would use the opportunity to walk through designing a Data Insight report using a custom virtual view.

Step 1: Writing the SQL Query

Before we get to Data Insight, we need a query to use for our virtual view. The report that I want to create is going to need to include the name of the form field (caption) so that I know I am getting the right GUID. I want to filter on the form name so that I can more quickly find the right form and form field. And if your system is anything like mine, you have multiple forms with the same or similar names, possibly even across various form families. So I am also going to want to bring in the form codes and the form family information.

All of these items are stored in just 3 tables: form_family, form_header and form_lines.

The form_header table holds information about each form. Each form_line belongs to a single form_header and gets a unique form_line_id per form that it is on. In other words, even if you have actual_date on all of your forms, each actual_date element has a different form_line_id for each form it is on. Also be aware that if you remove a form element form a form and re-add it to the same form, it will be assigned a new form_line_id when it is re-added.

Forms (form_headers) belong to a single form_family and so they have a form_family_id. Similar to the above statements about form_lines, if you delete a form in the form designer and then recreate it, it will have a new form_header_id. If you import a form from development into your production system, myEvolv is going to give your form and all of the form_lines (elements) therein a new id as part of the import process. Once your production is later copied over to development, that imported form’s elements and header will have matching ids.

So here’s the SQL query we will use for this report:

SELECT form_family.form_family_name, form_family.form_family_code, form_header.form_name, form_header.form_code, form_lines.caption, form_lines.form_lines_id AS nx_friendly_form_lines_id, UPPER(form_lines.form_lines_id) AS classic_friendly_form_lines_id FROM form_family JOIN form_header ON form_header.form_family_id = form_family.form_family_id JOIN form_lines ON form_lines.form_header_id = form_header.form_header_id

You will notice that I selected the form_lines_id column twice and that in on one of them, I used the UPPER() SQL function. GUIDs are returned from myEvolv in lower case format like this:

494eed56-36fb-4fda-b54f-a86f1d150b38

These work fine in your JavaScript for NX, but if you are working in classic, your JavaScript requires the GUIDs to be in upper-case so the UPPER() function takes care of that for you and returns that same GUID like this:

494EED56-36FB-4FDA-B54F-A86F1D150B38

This query will provide you with both options and you can choose to use one or both on the final report.

Step 2: Create Data Insight Virtual View

Now to Data Insight to create the virtual view we will use to create the report. In order to add or manage a virtual view in Data Insight, you must be assigned to a role with “Access Configuration Area” in Data Insight. If you haven’t played with Data Insight roles at all, then this is the same as saying you must be an Admin in Data Insight. if you have the proper permissions, you will see the “Configuration” option in your Data Insight menu.

Click the “Configuration” option and then in the center column, under “Database Object Configuration”, click the hyperlink for “Create a new virtual view.”

Give your new virtual view a name and a friendly name. The name must be letters, numbers and underscores. The friendly name can have spaces.

Copy and paste your query into the Definition field and then click the “Test Definition” button. You can ignore the red underlining here since that is just Internet Explorer’s spell check at work. It does not indicate that the SQL is malformed.

If your query is valid SQL, you should see a list of the selected columns from your query appear. If not, you may have errors in your SQL to fix.

Once you have a query that passes the test, click “Save” to save that virtual view.

Step 3) Create Data Insight Report

Navigate to the Report Writing area of Data Insight by clicking the “Report Management” option in the top menu. Then click “Add” and select “Report” from the drop down menu.

Select a “Tabular Report with Header” from the Report Template options and click “OK”

When the Data Source pop-up window appears, make sure the “Data Objects in:” drop down menu has “(All)” selected. Then check the box next to your virtual view to select it and then click “OK”.

Since the data we are looking at includes 3 tiers of information– Form Families that contain Form Headers (forms) that contain Form Lines (elements), it makes sense to ad some groupings so we can see more easily what all belongs to what.

Click the “Grouping Tab”, select the “Grouped Flat-Table” radio button and then click the “Add Grouping Layer” button.

On your first layer, add the form_family_name and form_family_code field and click “OK”.

Click the “Add Grouping Layer” button again to create the next grouping. For this grouping add the form_name and form_code fields and then click “OK”. When this step is done, you should have a grouping screen that looks like this:

Go back to the “Table Columns” tab and add caption, nx_friendly_form_lines_id and classic_friendly_form_lines_id to the “Assigned Columns” list. It should look like this:

Your report preview pane at the bottom should spit out a report that includes every form line in every form in every form family in your system. It probably takes a while to load. We don’t want such an unwieldy report so we will add a filter on the form name by clicking “Modify Data Source” on the left side of the preview.

PRO TIP: Hiding the Live Preview is a good idea if you have a report that runs very slowly to avoid having to wait for the report to complete upon each change made to the report.

In the pop-up window, click to view the “Filter” tab and then click “Add a Parameter”. Select the column form_name. Change the operator value to “Contains” and check the “Ask in Report” checkbox. Make a caption for your parameter prompt and then click “OK” to close the parameter details popup and then “OK” again to close the data source details popup.

Your live preview pane should now be blank but prompting you to enter a form name (or part of one). Test your report by searching for one of your forms.

You should see something like this in the results:

The first result in my report searching for “Compass” is for form lines on the Compass Address Information form in the Address Info for People form family. If I look at the form in form designer, I will see all of the same elements listed. Keep in mind the groups are also form elements and therefore are include on the form_lines_id. That is what “Address Information” is on the Compass Address Information form.

At this point, you can make the report look and work to your liking by changing the column captions, adding sorting, removing pagination, etc. Be sure to save your report and move or copy it from your personal reports folder to the Shared Reports if you want to allow others to use the report too.

Tag: reporting

JavaScript Fundamentals: String Concatenation

JavaScript Strings

“Pretty Print” Reports