Memorized Reports

DMB comes with an extensive set of Standard Reports that enable you to see league standings, league leaders, player and team statistics, injury and transaction logs, and game results.

Many of these reports include options that allow you to tailor those reports to your preferences. All reports can be displayed on the screen, sent to a printer, or saved to a text file in plain-text or HTML format.

Each time you generate a standard report, DMB fills the options window with default values that we defined. You may find that our choices work well for you most of the time. If, however, you prefer other choices for a report that you run very frequently, you can create a Memorized Report that saves those choices.

What's the difference between a custom report and a memorized report? A custom report defines the structure (sections and columns), while a memorized report defines the content (which teams and players to include, which date interval to use, how to sort the report, and which options to use).

Memorized reports give you the ability to say things like "I want to be able to run the team batting report for every team in my league, with pitchers shown as a group, and the players sorted by slugging percentage." More precisely, they give you the ability to save those choices for future use.

Generating a standard report involves two steps -- choosing the report and choosing the options -- before the report is displayed, printed, or saved to a file. When you generate a memorized report, only the first step is required, since the options have been stored as part of the memorized report.

This can save you a mouse-click or two when you generate a report to the screen (and you can still change the options via the Options button when you do this), but the real value is when you're generating reports to the printer or a file.

Suppose you're running a league and you have a dozen reports (standard or customized) that you like to produce for your league members at regular intervals. By memorizing these reports, you save yourself the trouble of entering the options each time. All you need to do is select each report, choose the destination (printer, plain-text file, HTML file) and out it comes.

Creating a Memorized Report

To memorize a report, start by displaying that report on the screen using the steps described in the Generating Reports topic. If necessary, use the Options button to get everything just the way you want it. Then click the Memorize button. DMB displays a window in which you can enter the name of the report and choose where it is stored:

If the options, including the scope information (the organization, league, team or player to be displayed), are quite specific to the active database, select "Store this report for use only with this database".  The memorized report file will be placed in the same folder with the other files for the active database.  If you choose to export the league database and distribute it to other members in your league, these memorized reports will be transferred along with the other files.

If your database has a structure that is very similar to that of our season disks -- one or two leagues, perhaps linked by an organization, with 16-30 teams that are numbered from 1 to 30 -- it might make sense to "Share this report with other DMB databases."  Because memorized reports contain scope information in the form of organization IDs, league IDs, and team IDs, the report can be generated successfully only if matching IDs are found in the active database.  That's why it makes sense to share a memorized report only if it was created with a database where the IDs are similar to those in your other databases.

If you choose to share the memorized report, it is placed in a common folder that is visible to all DMB databases and will appear on the list of available reports no matter which of your databases is active.  This, by the way, is where all memorized reports were stored in DMB version 8.  

The list of report names already in use is provided to help you choose a unique name for your new report.

After you have named the report and chosen where to store it, click OK to save this as a memorized report. The next time you use the Report > Standard, customized, memorized command, this memorized report will be displayed in the report selection window when you click on the appropriate report type if the Memorized box is checked in the Include in report list section.