Introduction
There are essentially three ways to track you Case workload in CiviPlus:
Using the Cases Dashboard - This is available out of the box and covered in the article here.
Using search tools -The ways in which these tools can support Case Reporting are covered in the articles on Advanced Search and Search Kit.
Using Case Reports - This is available out of the box, and is the focus of this article.
Case Reports
Creating a new Case Report
Depending on how your CiviPlus site has been configured there may be some Case Reports available out of the box, but don't worry if there aren't any yet as they are very easy to create.
There is a whole section on Reporting options within CiviPlus here, but for this article we will create a simple Case Report.
Navigate to Cases -> Case Reports and if any have been configure they will appear in the list.
If you need to create a new report, click NEW CASE REPORT.
On the Create New Report from Template page choose the template which most closely matches the type of Case Report you want. Note that there are a set of standard Case Report Templates available (some of which are labelled extended, which means they have additional options), and one in the "ReportPlus Report Templates" section. ReportPlus is an extension to standard reporting that provides some neat visualisation options - its definitely worth looking at but for this example we will simply choose the "Case Detail Report".
You will see the "Case Detail Report" - Template page, with a number of tabs such as Columns, Sorting, Display Options and Filters.
In order to create an actual report from the template we need to generate some results, and then save the template as a new report. To do this, go to the bottom of the page and click the VIEW RESULTS button. You will see some results shown (it doesn't matter what they are for now as we will be tailoring the report), but importantly some additional tabs have been created which means that this is essentially a copy of the template report. Now click Actions -> Create Report and enter a Report Title and Report Description before clicking on the CONTINUE button. This will cause the new report to be created and added to the list of available reports.
Now we have created the new report we can customise it to meet our requirements. Report configuration is cover in detail here, so we will just run through the basics in this example.
Note: None of the report configuration changes described below are applied to the report unless you click Save within the Actions menu. You may want to Save the report as you configure/test each tab so that you don't loose any of your settings if you have to leave the page for any reason.
Click the Columns tab to select/deselect the columns (fields) that you want to appear in your report. Note that the standard case fields are in the section at the top of the form, and any Custom Fields associated with any of the Case Types are shown in the collapsed sections below.
The Sorting tab allows you decide the order in which you want the results to be shown. You need to select at least one Column to sort the results, but you can add additional columns if you want and the results will be sorted accordingly. For each column added you can decide to sort in "Ascending" or "Descending" Order and also create a Section Header / Group By the column value. You can also force a Page Break when the Section Header / Group By value changes.
The Display Options tab allows you add an additional filter that only selects Cases that the current logged in user (i.e. the user running the report) is involved in by selecting the My Cases option.
The Filters tab is where you specify whether you ALL cases to be included in your report, or whether you to show a subset based on one or more crtiteria. In this example we are filtering on three of the Case Types
In the Title and Footer tab you can change the Report Title and Report Description, as well as enter HTML to format the Report Header and the Report Footer.
You can schedule the sending of the report to one or more people in the Email Delivery tab. Enter a Subject and one or more email addresses in the To and CC fields, separated by commas. Note: The Scheduled Jobs feature is used to actually send generate and send the email - this needs to be configured and enabled on your system for the Email Deliver function to work.
Lastly, the Access tab is where you specify how the report can be accessed, and who is allowed to view it:
By selecting the Include Report in Navigation Menu option you can include a link to the report so that it can easily accessed by users, we have also specified that the report link should appear under the "Case Reports" menu (i.e. Cases -> Case Reports -> Standard Case Details Report). For this example we have set the Link to option to "View Results" so that when a user clicks on the link they are shown the results straight away, the alternate is to "Show Criteria" which allows them to alter the search criteria before running the report.
You can control access to this report by selecting a 'Permission' from the list, or selecting one or more Roles. For example, you might select access CRM User (Cases) Cases reports (e.g. the same people who can see Cases data would also have access to the report). You can also prevent users from modifying the default report criteria and filters for reports by NOT giving them access Report Criteria permission. Those users will be able to run the report - but only with the criteria and filters that you've established for them.
The last few options in this tab allow you make the report private to you, restrict who can edit it and make it available on the CiviPlus Dashboard.
If you select "Yes" for the Add to My Reports? option the report will only be visible to the user that clicked this option and will appear in the My Reports section of the reports listing page.
If the Reserved Report option is selected, and you have the "Administer reserved reports", this report will be marked as reserved, which prevents other users from accessing or modifying Report Criteria and Report Settings.
Finally, Available for Dashboard? is a very useful setting which allows you to make this report instance available for users to include in their CiviPlus "Home Dashboard".
Using a Case Report
You can access a Case report in a variety of ways, depending on how it has been configured:
Via the Cases -> Case Reports menu, from which you can select the particular report you need.
Via the Cases -> Case Reports -> "Specific Case Instance", where Specific Case Instance is the name of each report that has been individually exposed on the menu, for example:
Via the Reports -> Case Reports menu
Via Reports -> My Reports, if you have specified that in the configuration as described above
Via the CiviCRM Dashboard, if the report has been exposed as a Dashlet in the configuration as described above
Once you have found the Case report you want, you can view the results, and Print, Print to PDF or Export as CSV from the Actions menu.
If you have sufficient permissions you can also change the report by adding/removing columns, filtering on different criteria and changing the sorting options - all of these are described in the section on Creating a new Case Report above.