Is it possible to have chart columns for reports grouped by month without applying a specific grouping parameter (entry date, start date)?

[JaredMauch]

I'm trying to create a report that will show the number of requests with the statuses of "new" or "in progress" and have them grouped by month. Is there a way to show in January we had X number of requests total with the two statuses and in February we had X number total?

When I don't have a grouping applied to the chart it won't let me run it but I don't see a grouping that will group them by month regardless of entry date, start date, etc. Is there a text mode solution by chance?

[Rafal_Bain]

Hi Jared,

From what I know grouping are necessary to achieve the same result in the chart. Also you need to reference a specific date field for this result, be it: entry date, planned start data, actual start date etc.

This setting:

Will enable columns grouping:

Hope this helps

Rafal

[OliviaCl]

Hey Rafal - is this only able to be done with Task reports? I've tried grouping by request entry date and have never seen the option to group by month.

[chuckm65]

Jared,

The reason you can’t group requests by month without specifying a field to group on (like entry date or start date) is because Workfront needs to know how to pull the report. For example, a report called Requests Started by Month would be grouped by Start Date and could contain different results than a report called Requests Entered by Month, which would be grouped by Entry Date. It’s likely that some requests aren’t started the same day they were entered.

What you need to decide first it what the people looking at your report really want to see. Do they only want to see the requests entered by month? If so, a specific report called Requests Entered by Month would be the right one for them.

But maybe they don’t care about this level of detail, they just want to know how much new work is coming in each month. Whatever it is they want, you need to translate that into the fields that provide that information and decide the best way to display the information so it can be useful.

You asked if there is a way to “show in January we had X number of requests total with the two statuses and in February we had X number total.” Yes, there is, but how do you decide whether a request should be in the January group and not in the February group? When grouping, no request can be in more than one group.

But maybe you want to see how many total open requests were in the system on January 1 and how many were in the system on February 1. You can’t do this with a grouping. Everything you see in Workfront Reporting is based on real-time data. So if you run a report on January 1 and save it as a spreadsheet, then run another report on February 1 and save it as a spreadsheet, you can open the two spreadsheets and compare the results. The easiest way to do this is to use the Send Report feature under Report Actions. Click on Repeating Deliveries to email yourself, or anyone, a report on a periodic basis.

I hope this helps. If you can give me more details about what you want to report on I might be able to offer more suggestions.

[JaredMauch]

Chuck,

Thanks for the explanation. I've been making reports for years, but a supervisor stumped me with this particular request. I have the two request statuses being tracked in separate reports. The one for requests with the status of 'new' is grouped by entry date by month. The one for requests with the status of 'in progress' is grouped by actual start date by month.

The supervisor who uses these reports was wondering if it was at all possible to combine the two reports to show the combined number of requests for both statuses while still being grouped by month.

I didn't think there was a way to combine them since they're grouped by two different values. I was wondering if there was any sort of trick through text mode to try and trick a report to combine the two sets of data. I'm guessing that there isn't.

[chuckm65]

You're right, you can't group by two different fields. You could combine the status part in your filter to include all requests that are either 'new' or 'in progress', but you would still need to group by only one date field.

In the report the supervisor is asking for, where would they like to see the following?

There is a 'new' request entered in May.

There is a 'in progress' request that was entered in April but started in May.

The report should show both requests in grouped in May, and neither of them showing up in April, right?

If that's the case, here's something you could do:

Create a calculated custom field of type date for issues called something like ‘Grouping Date'. In the calculation you would put this expression:

IF({status}="NEW",{entryDate},IF({status}="INP",{actualStartDate},""))

This will give you either the entry date or the actual start date depending on the status. It will be blank if the issue has any other status besides 'new' or 'in progress'. You can then group on Grouping Date in your report.

[JaredMauch]

Chuck,

Thanks for that tip. I'll give custom field a try!

[HansLa1]

I have created a chart as discussed, but I find when I sum by month, the chart shows January on the left, not to the right of December.  How can I force this to show records starting in mid 2023 to have January on the Right?