Sorting custom reports on MLS

[greggo]

One problem that I had in the past was not being able to get MLS to correctly sort by a number field (dollar amount, age, date, etc.). It would continue to sort alphanumerically. For instance, it would put the number 10 before number 2 in ascending order. I don't remember what particular report I was trying to sort at the time, but I was unable to duplicate the issue now with the practice database. Maybe this one has been fixed with a newer revision.

The one I continue to have an issue with is the way it sorts the tithing declaration report. In my opinion, it should be sorted by family (name of H of H) and within each family sorted by H of H then spouse, then each child by birth date (oldest to youngest).

During tithing settlement the bishop could use this report to have one list where the he could easily find all family members to record status, etc. As it is right now Mary Smith could be listed immediately before an unrelated Paul Smith who is then listed immediately before Mary's husband Tom Smith.

Before we had a computerized system, the form that was used for tithing declaration reports instructed us to list the members names exactly as I suggested above. It doesn't seem like a difficult thing for progammers to implement in MLS.

[aebrown]

One problem that I had in the past was not being able to get MLS to correctly sort by a number field (dollar amount, age, date, etc.). It would continue to sort alphanumerically. For instance, it would put the number 10 before number 2 in ascending order. I don't remember what particular report I was trying to sort at the time, but I was unable to duplicate the issue now with the practice database. Maybe this one has been fixed with a newer revision.

I've never known this to be a problem with built-in fields in MLS. Custom reports can't report on any financial information, so your example of dollar amounts isn't really possible, but ages and dates sort properly.

The one place you will see the phenomenon you describe is with string fields that contain numbers. For example, if in your ward you had a bunch of people who live on Elm Street, you could do a custom report filtering on "Address - Street 1" contains "Elm" and then try to sort by that column. But in this case, "213 Elm St" would come before "36 Elm Street but after "1046 Elm Street".

Another example would be if you created a Custom Field that contained an integer value. But Custom Fields can only be a string or a date, so you would have to make it a string. In this case, 10 would indeed sort before 2. You can try to avoid this by making all numbers in such fields the same length by zero padding (leading spaces are automatically trimmed, so you would have to use zeroes), so 02 would sort before 10, but that's clearly quite awkward. Obviously dates that are stored as strings would have the same problem, but since they can be specified as date types, that shouldn't be a problem.

The one I continue to have an issue with is the way it sorts the tithing declaration report. In my opinion, it should be sorted by family (name of H of H) and within each family sorted by H of H then spouse, then each child by birth date (oldest to youngest).

At least we do have the ability to print donor statements and tithing settlement statements by household, which is the more important capability, if we had to choose. But since we now have the ability for the statements, it does seem like it would be relatively simple to implement it just as it is done for Donor Statements and provide a "By Household" checkbox.

[Mikerowaved]

During tithing settlement the bishop could use this report to have one list where the he could easily find all family members to record status, etc. As it is right now Mary Smith could be listed immediately before an unrelated Paul Smith who is then listed immediately before Mary's husband Tom Smith.

This gets even worse with step-children with a different family name. I agree, a "Group by Family" button would be very useful, however, then you would need something to physically break the families into different groups. For example, having each HoH bold or background shaded, using indentation, or perhaps a blank line after each family group (not as paper friendly). I'm just saying it wont be quite as easy to program as the donor statements was. Yes, if they could work out a system, it would be very much appreciated.

[greggo]

I've never known this to be a problem with built-in fields in MLS. Custom reports can't report on any financial information, so your example of dollar amounts isn't really possible, but ages and dates sort properly.

I remember now where the "improper" sort took place. It was with the tithing declaration report. I wanted to group all of the non-tithe payers together by clicking on the Tithing or Total column headers. It did this, but it did so with the alpha-numeric sort as I described. I think this must have been an issue in other financial reports for me to think it was the same for all numeric fields, but like I said, it must have been fixed in a later release.

I admit that wanting to have this capability in the tithing declaration report is a rather "unrighteous" desire, as it would make it easier to find out who is paying more tithing than who. I checked with the practice database, and there is now no ability to sort by the Tithing or Total columns (but it's functional for all other columns).