EasyMTP Update May 2009 - New Reports

posted May 8, 2009, 3:17 AM by a.pastore@cgxchange.org
A new reporting and exporting functionality is available now in your EasyMTP.
 
The upgrade is being installed and tested in the local and hosted systems. For locally installed systems, please inquire about installation status with your Center's IT focal point (as of Friday 8 May, all local systems have been updated while ILRI, ICRAF and Africa Rice are being provided assistance with installation).
 

What's new in the EasyMTP Reports

 Here's an overview of the new features:

EasyMTP Reports Overview



Action required: what you should do now

1. Enable macros in your Microsoft Word

Download allows you to save reports to your computer with a .doc file extension. This uses a document template with macros which convert reports and any pictures used in the reports into a Microsoft Word Document.

 
In order to take advantage of the document template and macros, you must ensure that Microsoft Word is configured to allow you to choose whether or not to enable and run macros.

How to enable macros for Report Download

  • Open Microsoft Word.
  • From the Tools menu, choose Macro>Security....
  • Under the Security Level tab, select Medium.

After you download, save, and then open a report, you should now get the proper Security Warning Box

Be sure to click on Enable Macros when you get the Security Warning Box.

If you cannot change the Macro Security setting on Microsoft Word, contact the IT Helpdesk at your office


2. Test the performance of the reports
The new report functionality strips all unwanted formatting and applies a standardised template to the MTP content. 
 
The performance of the document download depends on three known factors:
  • length of the MTP report,
  • volume of unwanted formatting to be stripped off,
  • network/bandwidth conditions.
Please test the different types of reports available and report back to us (and your technical focal point if you are on a local system):
a. if download takes less than 1 minute, just let us know, no further action is required;
b. if download takes more than 1 minute, the clean-up functionality can be temporarily switched off to improve performance and be re-enabled before upload for the final check. Please contact us (for hosted systems) or your technical focal point (for local systems) to have the cleanup temporarily disabled.

Please report to cgmap-support any serious performance issue by Thursday 14 May.
 
If you prefer to have the clean-up functionality switched off, please be aware that the reports may look good in HTML but unwanted or messy formatting remains in the document download.
 
!Tips to avoid performance issues while keeping the clean-up functionality enabled!
  • View and print the standard reports to check and validate the content while you are still editing, and resort to the download option only to circulate it via email to non-registered users;
  • avoid downloading the full MTP report, just generate individual reports for the Overview, the Annexes and the Projects.


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