dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Johan Sæbø <johansa@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

we had some discussions in Malawi last week about documentation, and 
found, together with some users, that the Reports page, accessed from 
the main menu Services, is tricky. Rather than write very complicated 
documentation, it probably makes sense to change the GUI. Please find 
attached a first stab at it. Sorry for the format, it was easiest to do 
it this way during discussions.

Wanted to post it here first, to hear what people think of this, if it's 
needed at all, or some other suggestions, before making it a blue-print.

1) The majority (?) of users will probably be looking for what we call 
Standard reports and Data set reports, though these are not the obvious 
ones to select as it is now, even if they are on the top of the page. We 
thought it would make sense to put them under a more explaining heading, 
though did not come up with anything better than "Data and Indicator 
reports"

2) Under this heading we also put "Charts" and "Maps" (or GIS, as long 
as it is consistent), which is new in this page. If preconfigured map 
views are available, they should perhaps be so from this page.

3) Heading "Pivot Tables" or "Pivot Tables Reports", both with the 
in-DHIS one, and links to the Excel ones, if most users are actually 
thinking of the excel one if they hear pivot table.

4) Heading "Data Administration Reports". Not sure if this is the best 
way, but these reports are more on the meta-level. Data Completeness 
could be a Data Quality issue, just as the Validation Analysis could be 
called a report, but I'm not sure it makes sense to move Data 
Completeness reports to a different page (Data Quality)

5) Heading "Documents", containing "Archive" rather than what is now 
called Static Reports. The Tally Sheet Generator is not really a report, 
but for lack of a better place to put it, we put it here.

6) Heading "Client Reports" (changed from Scheduling), since there will 
probably be more client/patient based reporting functionalities in the 
near future.

7) Heading "Report Management". At least report grouping belongs here, 
but not sure about report tables. How much are report tables used as 
reports alone, compared to how much they are created, used in standard 
reports, but never used otherwise? If the latter is the most common 
case, then they probably belong under something like Report Management.

8) Default help screen. Now all options are listed, and explained by a 
line or two. To emphasise the main end-user uses, we thought of showing 
the "data and indicator reports"-options as thumbnails at the top, with 
only brief text for the other headings. Users of these probably don't 
need the help that much anyway. Also, the Malawi end-users we talked 
with understood much better what it was when we said it was a _monthly_ 
report, so some text with such wording might be useful. Now it's some 
text with reference to BIRT and Jasper.

Johan

Attachment: Report page layout proposal.xls
Description: MS-Excel spreadsheet