CJ976

I'm trying to figure out the best way to present multiple options in one report. For instance - say a client wants 3 options for displays in their bedroom - how are users presenting this through the use of d-tools generated reports?

I do not want multiple contracts for each location - but rather a single contract with options presented.

Right now I'm using an embedded excel spreadsheet in a word document - but we're trying to streamline our process for multiple options through the use of d-tools generated reporting documents.

slemay

Boy would I LOVE D-Tools to do something here! I love the "would you like fries with that hamburger" approach? - I think D-Tools really lacks in this area. Currently we create a 2nd proposal called "ADD-ONS" and list a bunch of items and change the prices to the difference of what is currently in their proposal to what the option upgrade might be. For example...

A LCD 10 Button screen in the main proposal, we may suggest in the ADDON proposal that to upgrade it to a Mini Touch Screen would cost an additional $500 per room etc...

It's a pain in the butt - but I believe showing the customer other options, they tend to want to upgrade at least a few things!!! Even if they say they didn't in the information gathering stages!!!

RandyB

This has been logged as a feature request, and is something we are hoping to include in our next major version. Please continue to comment on what you would like to see.

In SI5, I have seen people use custom Locations or Zones to accomplish this effect. You could also use an item custom property field to mark certain items "Option 1" or "Option 2", then create a custom report report that shows and subtotals these separately (group by Custom Property).

CrystalHacker

We did this in V4 by creating our own queries and hacking the reports. In our world, we found "Options" to me more important than Zones, so we used the Zone variable to group Items during the proposal phase. We created a "Base System" (Items that we not optional) Zone and a series of "Option" zones. We also included mini-project summaries that followed each Option. There was a signature line below each "Option" summary that indicated if the client wanted that particular option. We also eliminated the traditional Project Summary and Totals since they are meaningless in this context. Once the client signed off on the Options, we created a revision and deleted all the unwanted Options (Zones).

One of the reasons we have been a little slow to adopt Si5 is that we are trying to figure out how to provide this and many other proposal presentation concepts that were adopted over the years.

Since only a subset of the Item data is passed to Si5 reports, one has very limited options to get creative with the way data is grouped and presented. Hopefully more data, particularly the CustomProperties will be made available to reports in the future.

However, I agree with Randy that the best idea for this particular concept is to build it into the data model for this particular purpose. Too much hacking is not good in the long term. We would love to be on Si5, but we can't until we can resolve the outstanding report issues.