by Terri Schnoering

A little-known feature of Precision.BI’s Scheduler Job set-up options is the “Merged Option.” The “Merged Option” extends reporting capabilities by allowing two or more Custom Reports to be merged into a single PDF file for distribution via email.

These instructions presume that a Scheduler job with a Custom Report task for the primary custom report (the report that will begin the PDF) is already created. Alternatively, you could create a new Custom Report task and add both the main Custom Report task and the merged Custom Report task in the same creation step.

To merge two custom reports into a single PDF file in the Scheduler –
1. From the Administration tab, select Scheduler Administration

2. Locate the Custom Reports task to be modified and click the Plus sign (+) to the left to expand the job and display the Task Definition, as shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

(Note: The Merged option, shown, will be displayed for all object types but is designed to work with Custom Reports only.)

3. Any new Custom Reports merged with the original Custom Reports task will follow the original, in the order added. Next, we need to identify the report to be merged.

 

 

 

 

4. Use the drop-down icon to the left of the Saved report field to select the name of the second report to be added to the Scheduler task.

5. Use the drop-down icon to the left of the Saved search field to select the name of the search to be applied to the newly merged report.

6. Click Add to add the report to the list of Custom Reports associated with this task.

7. Repeat steps 4-7 if you wish to merge another Custom Report into the task.

An example of this feature is the ability to merge financial data with clinical data or GL data with HR data from different custom reports previously developed. This provides a broader range of reporting capabilities and allows for greater flexibility and less manual intervention by the end-user.

Another popular usage is to use a summary-level Custom Report as the primary Scheduler task, then merge in a Custom Report representing a finer grain of information as a merged report. The result is a standard summary / breakdown model – Place of Service / Providers, or Provider Summary / CPT, and so forth.