Creating a Compound Layout Report

There are multiple types of compound reports that can be built in the Document Composer, a compound layout report or a coordinated compound report.

A compound layout report is comprised of individual component reports or graphs, either embedded or external. Reports and graphs can be positioned anywhere on the page. When you create or open the Document Composer, the Properties window shows the compound document properties for the compound layout report.

Procedure: How to Add an Embedded Report

You can use the Document Composer to add embedded reports by either creating a report or importing an existing procedure.

To create an embedded report, double-click the Report icon.
To import an embedded report, right-click the Report icon and select Import existing procedure.

Procedure: How to Add an External Report

External reports are reports that are created and saved outside of the Document Composer. To reference an external report, right-click the Report icon and select Reference existing procedure. An EX command will be used to execute the component procedure at run time.

Reference: Adding External Reports

Reports must be saved with PDF output format specified in the procedure. Only the first report in the procedure must be in PDF format, the other report formats are ignored.
Graphs must be saved with a HOLD command, and specified as a format of SVG, GIF, or JPG. SVG will be the most common format since it produces the highest quality graphs. When creating new graphs from within the tool, SVG and HOLD should automatically be selected in the Graph Assistant (or Advanced Graph Assistant).
The following graph image output formats are supported in the Document Composer:
- When active report is the output format, no graph outputs are supported.
- When PDF is the output format, SVG, GIF, and JPEG are supported.
- When Excel is the output format, GIF and JPEG are supported.
- When PowerPoint is the output format, SVG, GIF, and JPEG are supported.

Procedure: How to Create a Coordinated Compound Layout

A coordinated compound layout coordinates all reports and graphs from the document with a common sort field. The coordinated report is burst into separate page layouts at run time, where each value for the first sort field displays on a separate page.

Note: When processing a coordinated compound document with missing values, any component that does not have data corresponding to the sort value will be presented as a blank (empty) component.

From the Properties window in the Document Composer, select Compound document from the Properties list.
Select On from the Coordinate report properties field.

Note: Coordinate report is set to Off by default.
Save and run the document.

The output is burst into separate page layouts by the common sort field.

In the example image below, the coordinated compound layout is run in PDF output with REGION as the common sort field among the report and graph within the document.