contexts
Recently, the project manager of the partner's client met a problem, they are doing automated reporting tools for the party, the project has been basically done, but take it to the final party, the business people are not too much to buy, the project manager for this is also every day crazy, did not think of the appropriate response program.
At this stage, the main problem is that the project manager and the A party communicated the requirements, and then set up the task, so that the R & D to research. But because the form of reports on the market is similar, most of them are done with Excel, the difficulty lies in the development of a highly similar to Excel and can also be applied to the web side of the project on the report. There are some software-level applications on the market, but can only use pivot tables to do statistical report analysis, and the user's expectations of more or less different forms of aggregation. Moreover, the integration cost is relatively large, which leads to the project team have no idea at the moment.
cure
In order to solve this problem, the project manager of the partner's customers to the editor for help, want to ask in the front-end development process, there is no use of a can at the same time have the habit of using Excel, but also can be integrated with the business database, to make a number of business reports of the front-end plug-ins.
In the process of searching for a solution, I conducted market research and explored different ways of generating reports to determine which was most likely to meet the desired needs of users, and I'm sharing that here as well:
Mode 1: Using the Excel tool
Excel can be extended through the mechanism, docking some business data. Users can be based on these business data, directly in the local Excel using pivot tables and other ways to make the form of the report they want to use Excel to do direct reporting has the following advantages:
- Familiar interface and operating style to reduce learning costs;
- Flexibility to customize report styles as needed;
- Data analysis and report generation can be performed locally without relying on other software or platforms.
In the current market, most companies are using this method, which is also in line with the best operating habits of most people, but in terms of the actual landing of the project, there will still be some difficult to solve the problem:
- At present, Excel is still an independent software, it is difficult to integrate with the enterprise's system, at present, most of the companies are to export the data from the system, and then use Excel to open it and then analyze it and do the report, and finally upload the report to the system, and at the same time, as a software that is independent of the system, the system's data is very easy to be exported outside of the system leakage;
- Excel currently exists in a number of versions, and compatibility between the various versions did not do the same, it will lead to different versions of the software will be incompatible with different versions of the problem will occur after opening, while with the rise of domestic office software WPS, incompatible with the problem will be even more serious in the future.
Overall, Excel, as the world's most widely used and efficient software, is still the first choice for small and medium-sized enterprises, but with the rise of major control products on the market as well as homegrown office software, more and more companies and enterprises are slowly beginning to have a new choice.
Approach 2: Self-developed or other reporting engine tools
This approach is suitable for companies with strong technical capabilities and a company's financial resources, where the needs of the end customer require a design format similar to that of an Excel report. If you are considering in-house development, the first task is to develop a functionality for Excel. This can be more difficult for the developer than just understanding the Excel extension API. Although there are some open source Excel-like plug-ins on the market, their functionality is relatively simple and they do not have the reporting capabilities that users require. As a result, this route is quite costly to implement.
Another approach is to leverage other reporting engine tools, which often have excellent data access capabilities and can generate the same Excel reports you need through form layouts. These tools are valuable if the end customer only needs to see Excel-like reports, or if the budget includes implementation and maintenance costs. After all, few companies would turn down the opportunity to easily generate revenue with little effort. However, if the customer needs to create reports based on business requirements, the cost of learning a new system is still unavoidable.
Way three: use the market highly similar to Excel front-end form control tools
I found in the market research, in addition to the direct use of Excel and self-research, in fact, there is a very mature front-end class Excel table controlSpreadJS, which was developed by Xi'an Grapevine, is overall very similar in use to Excel, and also has a pretty good reputation.
SpreadJS can be compatible with most of the basic capabilities of Excel, including pivot tables and formula functions, and even contains a pivot table and charts based on the relevant statistical analysis. This means that R&D only needs to be responsible for developing the data access interface, and business people can use Excel to create the reports they want in the same way as they did offline.
In addition, SpreadJS also has the same report production capabilities as the mainstream reporting engine , the difference is that in the form of report production , SpreadJS did not choose the commonly used on the market form configuration mode , but chose a class of Excel report design form , effectively reducing the user's learning costs .
The above animation is the operation process of SpreadJS reporting module, after the R&D has done the data access, the business people only need to drag and drop the corresponding fields to the cell position. After the cell background color, text size, row height, column width and a series of display settings, can be completely reused Excel-like habits. Currently on the market, this design form can be considered unique.
SpreadJS reporting mechanism is different from other reports in the design of the report , the user can directly in the design of the completed report to modify the data , the report is no longer just a form of view state . For example, when doing employee scoring, presented to the leader of the report, if the leader feels that the scoring of an employee is not appropriate, and hope that the score can be adjusted directly, no longer need to go back to the scoring system, as long as the developer access to a good data write-back interface, you can do the report in the report view state, high-privilege users can directly modify the data or entry, which is the same as to say that some of the fill in the work can be directly resolved through the report capability ( As shown in the figure below).
summarize
Taken together, the above three solutions have their own advantages and disadvantages. For companies with lower requirements for data security and relatively simple business needs, they can choose Method 1; for companies and enterprises with stronger technical strength, they can consider Method 2; and for companies with relatively weaker technical capabilities but needing to fill in a large amount of data, analyze it, and protect data security, and with a strong reliance on Excel, they can consider Method 3 in order to better satisfy user needs.