Joined Reports

Joined Reports are slightly more complicated than any of the other report types, but they allow you to do many, many things that would be impossible otherwise. In short, they allow you to have two, three, or four compatible reports together, side-by-side. Most importantly, they allow you to create formulas that span across different reports ("Cross Block Formulas"), which are very powerful and flexible. 

Sadly, Joined Reports also have some serious limitations. They cannot be scheduled or subscribed to like other reports. (Note for adminstrators: Joined Reports also cannot be used in reporting snapshots, seriously limiting the flexibility of snapshots.)

This video will familiarize you with the layout and appearance of Joined Reports, but you will learn the most by trying yourself:

Example A: I want to see a list of all active cases in my program and the number of meetings each client had with their case manager last month. To do this I need to use a joined report (if you want to know the full explanation of why you have to use a joined report here, you can read the article explaining why Performance Management Reports are mostly joined reports). Here's how I can do that:

1. Make a report that simply shows all my active case records
2. Make the report a "Joined Report" and add a second report of type "Case Records with Service Entries"
3. Filter the second report to exclude inactive cases, service entries that don't constitute meetings (like emails and messages), and service entries that fall outside of the month we want to see
4. Group the whole report by "Case Record"

Now for each group in the added report, you'll see the number of meetings as the "Record Count!"

Example A Extra Credit: In addition to the number of meetings, say I also want to see where my clients attended any classes or group sessions. After going through the previous steps, I do the following:

     5. Add a third report of type "Case Records with Direct Services"                                                 6. Filter the third report to only include Direct Services associated with a Group/Class ("Group/Class Service Entry" not equal to "") and only include direct services falling within our time period.                                                                                                                                 7. Create a "Cross Block Formula" that takes the "Record Count" from Block 2 and adds it to the "Record Count" from Block 3 and add this formula to your report

The created formula field now shows all meetings including groups and classes!