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Errors

Summary properties are lost in custom report formats in Practice CS

If summary properties are lost after you close and reopen a field in the OutputValue Formula screen, update your formulas so that all possible results resolve to a numeric value.
In custom formats and custom reports, subtotals and report totals in the GroupFooterN section require the following settings on the Summary Properties tab to calculate correctly:
  • The type of total
  • The corresponding GroupHeader section
You may find that the summary properties of a subtotal or report total are lost after you close and reopen the field in the
OutputValue Formula
 screen.

Why summary properties are lost

The most common cause is a formula that doesn’t resolve to a numeric value. This frequently occurs in If statements where one possible result is non-numeric, such as a phrase, a blank, or null (2 double quotes together represent a null value).
The following If statement causes summary properties to be lost because if the condition is false, the statement resolves to null (""):

[IF(Billing Decision bill amount(Billing Decision) > 0,
Billing Decision bill amount(Billing Decision), "")]
To retain the summary properties, replace the null value with a numeric value. In the following corrected example, the null is replace with 0:

[IF(Billing Decision bill amount(Billing Decision) > 0,
Billing Decision bill amount(Billing Decision), 0)]
Summary properties can also be lost if the formula contains a hard return at the beginning or end. A blank space at the start or end of the formula indicates this problem. Delete any leading or trailing blank spaces to resolve the issue.
note
If a formula in your custom format uses "0" or "1" in quotes as an output, Practice CS treats the value as an alphabetic character, not a number. Remove the quotes to ensure the value is treated as numeric.

Impact of the Practice CS 2011.1.1 release on custom reports

Practice CS introduced this requirement in the 2011.1.1 release. All standard reports and Practice CS library reports were updated to meet this requirement at that time.
If you created your own custom report, it continued to work correctly until you opened it in
Setup
Custom Formats
. At that point, Practice CS removed all summary properties from any field whose formula resolved to a non-numeric value.
To fix affected reports:
  1. Update each formula so that all possible results resolve to a numeric value, as shown in the previous corrected example.
  2. Re-enter the summary properties for each affected field.

This article applies to:

  • Product: Practice CS