Report Transformations - No-code development platform

Thinking about this further a possible Report writer interface is:

  • A menu to select the type of file to be exported
  • Cells in that column enable selection of a data element or valid data delimiter for the chosen file type.
  • Entering a data element would consist of entering the data element name (column heading in a cvs file, element name in structured data like xml) and which report column the data value is taken from.

This would simplify generation of electronic communication data. I think it would cover all static data structures, which I suspect is by far the majority.

The only exception I’m aware of is the “Allowance - Other” in the Australian single touch payroll which uses a dynamic data structure consisting of data labels

  • Other allowance [ integer 1 … 20 ] description
  • Other allowance [ integer 1 … 20 ] value

Where the description is a pay type specific to a group of employees such as “Jobkeeper-Topup”, so in Manager terminology it is a payslip item name. I suspect this is rare in data communication standards so could be ignored. If not supporting it could be done by allowing the data element name to be dynamic (reference a cell not static text) and allow more general control structures (not just “Supplier” or “Employees”). Hopefully this isn’t required as it risks complicating the interface.

Report writer control structures

The current No code report writer supports looping for

  • Suppler
  • Employee

If a spread sheet style layout was used these could continue to be implemented using the current interface, perhaps enhanced by showing the loop boundaries in a grey area with labelling.

An alternative is to enter the control structure in a similar manner to entering a data value in column A. Doing so would result in the same changes as described above. While this approach would result in a more flexible report writer architecture, it may involve too much programming to be viable in the near term.