Create Your First Report

Welcome to ItemPath’s Reports tool!

This tutorial will teach you the fundamental steps to create your first report, allowing you to quickly gain valuable insights from your data. This guide will walk you through the process of tracking completed pick tasks within a one-week period.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to:

• Select the right data source (theme) for your report.
• Add relevant information (columns) to your report.
• Filter your data to focus on exactly what you need.
• Understand options for organizing and refining your report data.

Plan and create your new report

Think of a report in ItemPath as a way to generate a custom table of your ItemPath or Power Pick data. To start, you’ll need to define what kind of information your report will focus on.

In ItemPath, a report’s theme determines the information available for the final output. A theme specifies the main table for your report. Each row in your report will represent a record from this main table.

While you might initially think to use the Order theme for tracking pick tasks, the History theme is a record of transactions performed in Power Pick. Individual rows in this History table represent completed jobs or interactions within Power Pick. A transaction is also associated with other records, but we're primarily interested in the number of times that a worker interacted with Power Pick to retrieve an item from storage.

What are related tables? 

These are tables associated with the main theme’s table through a relationship (like a lookup). For example, if you chose the Order Line theme, you could add columns from the Orders table since each order line is associated with a parent order.

You can review various themes and columns in the Report Data Reference. When you're building reports in ItemPath, it's important to have a good grasp of the data structure used by Power Pick.

To create a new report of pick orders from the past week:

1. Navigate to the Reports app by clicking Reports in the top navigation bar.
2. Click the New Report button.
3. From the theme selection screen, select the History theme, and in the name field, enter “Weekly Picks”.
4. Create Report.

You will be taken to the report interface for your new report, starting on the Columns tab.

Here’s a quick overview of the different tabs in the report interface:

• Filters: Use this tab to filter the data in your report based on specific conditions for various columns.
• Columns: This is where you add the specific data fields you want to see in your report.
• Snapshots: Configure scheduled “pictures” of your report data at regular intervals. These can include summary or aggregate statistics.
• Export: Export the results of your report run, or the report’s template.
• Data: View the actual results (the generated table) of your report.

Add columns

Columns in your report are just like the columns in an Excel spreadsheet — they represent the specific pieces of information you want to see. For the “Weekly Picks” report, add columns that are relevant to understanding completed pick tasks.

You can add columns using the interface elements at the bottom of the Columns tab. For this report, leave the Column type dropdown menu set to “Column” — ItemPath has other types of columns to support calculations (Comparisons) and counting within a grouping (Count).

To add a column, you have two main options:

1. Browse and select: Use mouse-clicks with the Select a Column textbox to explore tables associated with the theme. You can then manually check the columns you want to add.
2. Type to add: Simply type the names of the columns you’d like to add directly into the input field. ItemPath will suggest matches as you type. Manually check the selection that matches what you’re looking for.

For this report, you’re interested in pick tasks, so you’ll need at least the type of the transaction. Power Pick stores this information as a numerical value (History Type). You might want to review the History page of the Report Data Reference to decide which columns are most useful for your specific needs.

Here’s a recommended set of columns (all from the History table) to get started with this report:

Note: If you want to know more about the meaning of values in reports generated by ItemPath, consult with your Power Pick documentation or the Report Data Reference.

After you add columns, you can reorganize them by dragging and dropping within the list of columns (click and hold on the six dots in a column card).

See Add or Modify Columns for more information about columns in reports.

Add filters

Now that you’ve added columns, when you view the Data tab, your report would display every single transaction from the entire History table in Power Pick. This would be far more data than a manager or analyst typically needs and would include other transaction types you’re not interested in.

You will want to restrict the records included in the final report in two specific ways:

1. Only include records where the Modified Date falls within the last week.
2. Only include records where the Direction Type corresponds to pick tasks.

To apply these filters:

1. Navigate to the Filters tab.
2. Add your filter for the date:
   1. Select the “Modified Date” column from the “Select a Column” dropdown menu.
   2. In the dropdown beside “Modified Date,” select “during.”
   3. In the values dropdown, select “last week.”

   4. Add.

      

3. Add your filter for pick tasks:
   1. Select “Direction Type” from the “Select a Column” dropdown.
   2. Select “is” from the dropdown beside the “Select a Column” dropdown.
   3. In the value textbox, type 2.
   4. Click the value textbox again, and type 4. You’ll see 2 and 4 appear in separate grey boxes, indicating that ItemPath will include transactions with either value.

   5. Add.

      

That’s it! Once you’ve added filters, they’ll be applied whenever the report runs.

See Filter Report Data for more details about report filters.

View and organize your data

Now that you’ve added columns and filtered your data, your report will generate a clear table showing each pick task completed during the previous week.

Note: The filters are relaxed to showcase test data.

You can easily sort the data in the report by clicking on the column headers in the Data tab. This is incredibly helpful for identifying specific groups (for example, looking at tasks completed by particular users or for certain materials) or for spotting areas of concern (for example, sorting by “Deviated Quantity” from largest to smallest to see where the biggest discrepancies occurred).

You can also limit the number of rows in your report with the limit checkbox on any page of the reports interface. Enter the number of rows, and check the box to apply the limit from any tab of the Reports interface. If you would like a report on the top-20 largest deviated quantities in the previous week, combining this with sorting on the deviated quantities column can help point to areas of concern.

See View Report Data for more information about sorting and limits for your data.

Add a weekly snapshot

Snapshots are a powerful tool in ItemPath’s reporting system. They let you track trends in your warehouse data over time and generate insightful charts (like bar or line graphs) directly from your reports.

For example, if you want to see a trendline showing the number of pick transactions on a week-to-week basis, you can set that up using a snapshot from your current report.

To set up a snapshot:

1. Navigate to the Snapshots tab in the report interface.
2. In the “Snapshot Name” field, enter “Weekly Pick Trend”.
3. Specify the following values for how your snapshot data should be generated:
   1. Set Generate to the “Count” of Report Rows. This counts how many pick transactions are in your report for each period.
   2. Set Grouped by to “Creation Date”. This organizes your counts by the date the pick transaction was created.
   3. Set Grouping Range to “Week”. This specifies that you want to see the count for each week.
4. Add your snapshot to your report.

Once you have set up your snapshot, when you next go to the Data tab, you’ll see a new section appear above your main report table. From this section, you can select the Weekly Pick Trend snapshot and then specify the type of chart you’d like to review (a line chart for trends or a bar chart for comparisons). Snapshots are also how you get report data into Dashboard views – giving quick access to valuable insights in ItemPath.

Congratulations

You’ve successfully created your first report in ItemPath! You now have a powerful, tailored, tool to track completed pick tasks within the last week.

The rest of our Reports documentation provides you with detailed articles on topics like filters, columns, and grouping operations.

Feel free to experiment with adding different columns, adjusting filters, and trying out the sorting options to create even more insightful reports. The more you explore, the more valuable insights you’ll uncover!