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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Group Report Data

Group Report Data

Create a report design file.
Report Designer enables you to group a set of rows within a report by the values of one particular column. For example, the grouping feature allows you to:
  • Aggregate and summarize a grouping and add this information to the report.
  • Add titles or other text to the beginning of each group.
  • Add averages, counts, subtotals, and other summary information to the beginning or end of each group.
  • Insert a page break before or after each group.
If you need to group custom report data, wherever possible use the grouping functionality that Workday provides for custom report configuration before creating your report design.
In addition, due to performance issues inherent in BIRT, Workday recommends that you don't use Report Designer's group-by feature for data sets where the custom report data exceeds 10 MB.
  1. Bind the primary data set to a table within the main body of the report. In the
    Property Editor - Table
     view, select the
    Binding
     tab, then select the primary data set from the
    Data Set
     drop-down list.
    The Workday runtime has to make at least one complete scan of a data set to find all the values for the column it's grouping on. The runtime must also store the grouped-by data in memory until it has rendered the complete data set. Keep this factor in mind when you're considering using this feature. We recommend using grouping only on data sets that are relatively small and never when you are using the
    Apply report design separately for each row
     option.
  2. In the
    Outline
     view, expand the
    Body
    Table
    Groups
     node. Right-click
    Groups
     and select
    Insert Group
    .
  3. As you specify the group's properties, consider:
    Option Description
    Name
    The group name.
    Group On
    The data set column to group on.
    Expression
    The data binding expression for the column.
    Sort direction
    Ascending or descending.
    After grouping has occurred, a display row number might not match the row order of the initial data, leading to incorrect joining of primary and secondary data sets. If you want to add a secondary data set binding to a report with a grouped primary data set, you must set the
    PrimaryRowNumber
     parameter from the primary data set using a new column named
    Row_Number
    , which is added automatically.
    To do so, click
    Data Set Parameter Binding
     in the
    Property Editor - Table
     view and give the
    PrimaryRowNumber
     parameter the value
    row["Row_Number"]
    .
    Be aware that the expression
    row.__rownum
     was used in Report Designer for Workday 17 and Workday 18. It is important to understand the difference between these 2 expressions:
    • The new
      row["Row_Number"]
       expression is a column placed in the data set by the Workday extensions. It indicates the row order of the report data item in the report data coming from the server.
    • The former
      row.__rownum
       expression was a special expression that indicated the row number at display time of the data set item.
  4. To add text or other report items to the end or beginning of every grouping, use the group header and footer. Example, you can add an aggregation of one of the fields, based on the grouping. First add a column binding for the aggregation, then add that to the table group footer.