What you will learn
Section titled “What you will learn”Write a measure that two people can calculate the same way.
Prerequisites: IFS Cloud essentials. No IFS login is needed for this written exercise. Estimated reading time excludes practice.
The concept
Section titled “The concept”A report starts with a business definition. Specify the population, included states, date basis, unit, and refresh expectation before selecting a tool. This lesson is a metric-design exercise; IFS offers multiple reporting and analysis capabilities whose suitability depends on the use case.
A worked scenario
Section titled “A worked scenario”‘Open handovers’ sounds obvious until one person excludes cancelled work, another counts lines instead of headers, and a third uses yesterday’s extract. Those differences can produce three plausible but incompatible numbers.
Work through it
Section titled “Work through it”- Name the business question and the decision the result supports.
- Define the unit of counting and included or excluded states.
- Specify time boundaries, timezone, and business context.
- Write a worked example and have the owner approve its result.
Try it yourself
Section titled “Try it yourself”Define an open-handover count for five fictional records: two Open, one Completed, one Cancelled, and one Open outside the selected site.
See a suggested answer
For the selected site, count each handover once and include only Open status. The result is 2. Document that the third Open record is outside the population. If the business wants a different definition, change the definition and expected answer together.
Check your understanding
Section titled “Check your understanding”Adding amounts across currencies or quantities across units without an agreed conversion method.
Expected result: a written answer that explains your decision and identifies what still needs confirmation in the actual environment.
Cleanup: none; this exercise changes no IFS data.
Sources and review status
Section titled “Sources and review status”IFS Cloud 26R1 documentation. Source consulted 2026-09-23. The scenario and exercise are original fictional examples. This concept draft has not been reviewed by an IFS specialist or executed in an IFS environment.
Apply this lesson in the handover-reference project.
Continue through presentation and delivery
Section titled “Continue through presentation and delivery”The reporting learning center connects metric design with branding, translations, signatures, attachments, and unattended printing.
Put this into practice
Section titled “Put this into practice”For an operational report example, follow the report data-to-layout procedure and reconcile its fictional fixture before checking the PDF.