How to Snag a Sample Report from the FRx Demo Company

 Shorten your FRx report creation time by starting with a demo report.

FRx comes with a demo company called FW, or Fabrikam. Fabrikam uses the FRxDemo spec set. A spec set is simply a grouping of reports. Each FRx company points to a single spec set. Anyway, the FRxDemo spec set is full of sample reports that might give you a headstart on creating your own reports. Today we’re going to grab a Rolling Quarter P&L from Fabrikam and bring it into a live spec set.

1. Review the Company>Information screen. Open your company and look at the spec set being used. It’s the first dropdown box on the ‘FRx System Information’ tab. Write it down or remember it as we’ll use it in Step 5. Close the Company>Information screen.
2. Now go to Company>Specification Sets. Click on ‘FRxDemo’ in the list, and then click ‘Export’.
3. In the resulting ‘Export Selection’ dialog box, scroll down to ‘IS_RollQtr’ and click it to highlight it. Notice that its corresponding row, column, and tree are automatically selected.
4. Click ‘Export’, name the file and let it default to the io_data directory, then click ‘Save’. In this location, it will be very simple to find when you import it. Name it anything you want, but be sure it has a ‘.tdb’ extension.
5. Now with the Specification Sets dialog box still open, click on the spec set you identified earlier in Step 1, your live spec set.
6. Click ‘Import’ and select the export file you created in Step 4. When you click ‘Open’, the ‘IS_RollQtr’report and its building blocks are imported into your spec set. It finishes very quickly, and you won’t see any notification that the process is finished. If you’re fast you might notice some status messages in FRx’s lower left hand corner.

The IS_RollQtr report was built to run on the demo database, so it doesn’t fit your account structure. Like I said, it’s a headstart. Start by editing the row and go from there.

If your company has multiple live spec sets, you can use this technique to grab reports from your other spec sets.

You can also use the export technique if you have a particularly important catalog that you want to be sure to hang onto. By the way, the export doesn’t save any data—just the building blocks.