Pre-built report formats

Members360° offers several pre-built reports with specific formatting.  You can create a report at any time, and then you can re-run that report whenever you like.  Members360° offers directories, rosters, labels, badges, and other report formats.

Members360° also offers Word Mail Merge reports, which are much more flexible than the pre-built formats.  To learn more, see Word Mail Merge reports.  The only pre-built report format that cannot be made in Word is the Member Statistics Report (described below).

There are five steps to creating a report:

1. Create a Smart Group to determine what members are included in the report

2. Create the new report

3. Choose a report format

4. Customize the fields and layout

5. Save the report

Each step is explained in detail below.

Create a Smart Group

By default, your Members360° system comes with one group definition, All Members, that allows you to create reports that include all your members.  If you need a more targeted group of members in your report (such as only certain member types), see Smart Groups by characteristic.  Once you create a group, you can use it for reports repeatedly.

Create the new report

To create a new report:

1. You can navigate to either the Reports area or the Smart Groups by Characteristic area to create a report.  Both methods are explained below.

• Navigate to Members > Reports, and click add report in the upper right; or

• Navigate to Members > Smart Groups, find the group you want to use as a basis for your report, and click for that group.

2. In either case, you'll be taken to the Add a New Report page.  The Smart Group will be All Members if you used the add report link, and it will be your previously selected group if you used the button from the Groups page.

   

3. In the Report name field, type a name for your report.  The name you choose will appear at the top of your printed report, so choose carefully.  For example, you could type 2005 Active Member Directory for a report that served as your association's member directory for the year 2005, based on a Smart Group that includes all active members.  The phrase 2005 Active Member Directory would appear at the top of your report in most cases.

4. Select the member or smart groups to include in your report:

• Member or group:

• Select the Member name radio button if you wish to filter the report for a specific member by name. Begin typing the member's last name in the text field. A dropdown menu will present a list of members whose names match your search text. User summary information is shown if you hover over a member's name in the list. Choose the desired member from the list. OR

• Select the Smart group radio button if you want to filter by smart group membership. For this option, choose a smart group from the dropdown menu on the left and, if desired, further filter the report by selecting an option from the dropdown menu on the right. The number of members in the selected smart group will be displayed. (If you created your report from the Groups page, the appropriate group will already be selected.) Remember that the group dictates which members will be included in the report.  The default selections in the right and left dropdown menus (All Groups and All Members, respectively) will include every database member in every group in this report.  Any other groups will have been created by you or another administrator to specifically include certain individuals/organizations.  For more information on groups, see Smart Groups.

5. The Report format field is explained in the next section.

Choose a report format

For every report you create, you can choose from different pre-built formats, or you can choose the Word Mail Merge formatted (explained in a separate document on Word Mail Merge reports).  Also, some groups may have a Custom Reports option, containing reports that have been specially created by Affiniscape.  Each format has certain characteristics about how it lays out fields and other elements.  You can customize each format in different ways.

Here are the formats you can choose from, along with explanations of each.  Depending on which you select, you'll get additional options as explained in Customizing the fields and layouts below.

• Member Directory: This report is used to create a basic directory listing of members.  You can include several fields in a standardized format, which is displayed on the report creation page.  You can create a custom header and footer for the report.  You can also choose one field by which to sort the report.  The result will be much like a standard phone or address list.

• Member Roster: This report is similar to the Member Directory above, except that you can choose one or two fields by which to group the results.  For example, you can group by member type and/or by state.  You can choose fields to display as well as a custom header and footer.

• Mailing Labels: This report will provide printable mailing labels for members.  You can select up to four fields for the name area (which goes on the first line), up to three fields for the street address (each of which gets its own line), and then the specific fields to be used for city, state, zip code and country (all of which go on the same line).  The sort order is also definable.  The printable or PDF results are in Avery 5160 format, with 3 columns of 10 labels each.

• Name Badges: This report will provide printable name tags for members.  You can define several rows of information, each with up to three fields.  You can define a custom text separator to go between any pair of fields.  The first row uses a large, bold font, so you'll typically add the name to the first row and other info to the other rows.  The printable or PDF results are in Avery 5392 format.

• Certificates: This reports allows you to print individual certificates for members.  For example, you can provide attendance certificates for events or classes, or CLE certificates for members at a conference.  You can add fields, images, and text in pre-defined areas to construct your certificates.

• Membership Statistics: This report gives you a breakdown of members by member type, shows you how many members have joined within a specified date range, shows you which members are not active as of the current date, and also gives you a custom breakdown page for your membership.

• Word Mail Merge: This feature is explained in the separate Word Mail Merge Reports document.

When you select one of the pre-built report formats, you can continue customizing your report as explained in the next section.

Customize the fields and layouts

Depending on which format you choose, you'll have different possible customizations to perform.  In all cases, you'll get to control which fields show up in what order on the report.

Customizing a Member Directory

If you choose the Member Directory format, you'll have the following screen to customize your report.

In the Page header text field, type in any text you wish to appear at the top of the report (on the first page only).  You can leave this blank if you wish.

In the Assign data fields for Directory Entry area, choose the fields that you wish to have in your directory, using the example to the right of the dropdowns as your guide to positioning and formatting of fields.  For example, if you're using a rule that returns individuals, you'll probably use the default fields, whereas if you're using a rule that returns organizations, you'll probably change the first field to Organization Name and make the next three blank (by choosing (Please select) for them).

In the Footer text field, type in any text you wish to appear at the bottom of the report (on the last page only).  You can leave this blank if you wish.

Customizing a Member Roster

If you choose the Member Roster format, you'll have the following screen to customize your report.

You can choose up to seven fields to be displayed for each member; these fields will be displayed as columns of data.  For example, if you choose First Name, Last Name, and Primary Organization, you will have three columns with those names in your report.  Use the appropriate blue arrows in the top shaded box to add, remove, and reorder displayed fields.

Underneath, there are two more shaded boxes.  The first is Sort by, and you can add as many or as few fields as you wish as sort fields.  If you sort by multiple fields, your data will sort primarily by the first field, secondarily by the second field, and so on.  For example, if you sort by Last Name and then First Name, the list will sort by last name, and any group of people with the same last name will then be sorted by first name within that group.

The second shaded box is Group by, and you can optionally choose one or two fields to group by.  These do not have to be fields you're already displaying; in fact, it's often unnecessary to both group by and display the same field (though you can for reinforcement).  For example, you can group by Member Type, and each member type will be in its own section (with each section sorted as you specified earlier).  Or you could group by State and then City to get that kind of breakdown in your report.

You can also add a custom header and a custom footer to your report.

Customizing Mailing Labels

If you choose the Mailing Labels report format, you'll get the following screen:

You will build the format of each label, line by line, using the lists you see here.

You can add up to four fields as "name" fields, which means fields that go on the first line of the label.  You can add up to three fields as "street address" fields, which means fields that each go on their own line under the name fields line.  Add a field by highlighting it on the left and clicking the right arrow, or remove a field by highlighting it on the right and clicking the left arrow.

You can choose a city, state, postal code, and/or country field if you wish; these four fields will make up the last line of your address label.

Finally, you can choose a field by which to sort the labels.  By default, this will be the Last Name field, but you can choose another if you wish.

The layout of the mailing labels conforms to Avery 5160 format, with three columns of ten labels each.  Note that the on-screen version will show only one column, but the printed version or PDF export will show the true print formatting.

Customizing Name Badges

You will see the following screen when you choose the Name Badges report format.

At the top is a Header text area.  You can type anything you like into that area, and it will display at the top of each name badge.  Under the header, there's a Logo field, where you can browse for an image to include on the badge above the name.

The next row is the name row, which is the most prominent row on the badge.  Pick the fields you want to populate this row, normally first and last name.

For the other rows, choose any fields of information you wish.  You do not have to pick fields for all four rows, nor do you have to choose all three fields for any given row.  It's up to you how much info you want on your name badges.

You'll see a text box between each pair of field pulldowns.  These text boxes allow you to add separators, such as spaces, commas, or dashes, between each pair of fields.  By default, these fields will have spaces in them, but you can change them to commas and spaces, dashes, or any other character separators you wish.

Customizing Certificates

If you choose the Certificates report format, you will see the following screen.

At the top, you have the ability to load up to two images into your certificates.  The Certificate image field allows you to upload an image to appear in the upper left of every certificate.  The Logo image field allows you to upload an image to appear in the bottom center of every certificate.  To upload an image to either location, click the appropriate Browse... button to locate the image on your computer's hard drive and then press the Upload button

The rest of the page has pulldowns and text fields.  You can choose a field from any pulldown to add that field to that portion of the certificate.  You can enter text into any of the text boxes on the page; the text will act as a separator for the boxes on the top half of the certificate, and they will act as field labels for the bottom half of the certificate.  Remember that text you enter into boxes will be the same on every certificate, and fields you choose will be different for each certificate.

Customizing a Membership Statistics report

When you choose the Membership Statistics report format, you get a screen like this:

The Membership Statistics report is a two-section report.  The first page includes:

• the Statistics page header at the top (which you type in when designing the form, as shown in the screenshot above)

• a summary of active, new, renewing, renewing after lapse, and lapsed members according to the Report start date and Report end date you selected (Note that if you leave the Report end date field blank, the current date is used as the end date for the report.)

• summaries broken down by member type for each of the categories in the overall summary; the report shows active members as of today's date, and all other summaries within the specified date range, with non-renewals taking the Grace period you enter into account (A member shows as non-renewing only if his or her end date plus the grace period is earlier than your report start date.)

• graphical pie charts representing all of the above tables that have at least one member (if you checked include pie charts when setting up the report)

The remaining pages show a breakdown of members by whatever grouping fields you chose in the Group by area when designing the report.  For example, if you choose State and Group as your two group fields, you will get a breakdown of how many members are in each state, and within each state, you'll get a sub-grouping of how many members are in each of your participation groups.

Save and view the report

When you have fully created and customized your report, click the button at the bottom.  If you would rather preview the report before you save it, you can click the button to look at the report, then save it if desired.  See Viewing, downloading, and printing reports for more information.