We’ve been doing some digging around how to improve performance for our most generated report, the Order Detail Report, and one of the quickest ways we’ve been able to do so is by cutting down the number of columns included in the export. Reducing the number of columns from the default of 92 to, say, 20 let us generate a 75,000 line export in less than 5 minutes, for example.
Before we begin looking at enhancements and feature changes to this report, we’d like to open discussions about how necessary it is for the Order Detail report to have all of its 90+ columns selected by default.
Would you be open to have only a 20 or so columns selected on the Order Detail Report by default if it meant being able to get monthly or even quarterly reports consistently without having to keep “retrying”?
If so, which columns would you say are critical?
Thanks in advance for anybody who takes the time to answer!
Hi, I’m all for quicker reports however the minute you take away a sales line , you end up needing it. Any chance you could have two reports, one detailed (as is) and the other an overview report(which is where you are heading). Thanks, leo
You are going have a really hard time getting everybody to agree to a default, just because wineries run their businesses in so many unique ways and are so convicted in their individualized reporting needs.
What about if you stripped the default reports down even more, like to 15 fields:
Order Number
Order Status
Order Type
Completed Date
Sales Associate
Bill First Name
Bill Last Name
Bill Email
Department
Product Type
Product SKU
Product Title
Quantity Sold
Item Price
Ext Item Price
This will be good for at a glance reporting for a large portion of your customers, but it won’t be perfect for anybody’s deeper reporting needs. But by making it so bare bones, you’ll force us to really configure what’s important to our wineries.
The challenge would be communicating that these are just the defaults and that 90 other fields are readily accessible. You’ll have to improve the UI to do that, I think. You’ll also have to communicate this to everybody really clearly before you make the change. Might be even worth it for WineDirect to build a couple different saved versions of the Order Detail report and make them standard for all clients.
You’d still be able to design and save reports that fit your individual needs. Just the baseline, default configuration of Order Detail would have fewer options to reduce server load and speed up reporting for everybody.
Have you checked out the Orders by Ship/Pickup Date report?
I agree these fields listed would be a great default and then I assume we can just go into the existing Manage Columns field to add other fields we may need.
I also like EdFarmCollective’s list, although I would add Contact Status and Cost of Goods. But if all you are suggesting in terms of the proposed change is that when we click on the Order Detail Report, these will be the default columns checked in the Manage Report Columns (rather than all bar 3 currently) then I don’t think it’s a big deal either way.
Also, I assume any saved reports will be unaffected.
