Built-in Report Templates vs Reports You Build

The Reports page mixes two different things: built-in report templates that ship with DeskManager Online, and reports your dealership has built. They follow different rules for who can see them, whether they can be starred as favourites, and what happens when one is deleted. This article sets out the differences that people most often run into.

Questions this answers

• "One of my newer office staff says she can't find some of the built-in report templates that the rest of us use all the time. She's not getting any error, they're just not there for her. Why?"
• "I noticed that when I switch between our two store locations, the list of custom reports I can see under one of our roles is different. Is that supposed to happen?"
• "I can star my own reports as favorites but there's no star on the built-in ones. How do I get a canned report into my Favorites tab?"
• "I deleted one of my custom reports by mistake and the confirmation said it couldn't be undone from here. Is it really gone for good?"

This article is about which reports appear for whom. If the whole custom list is missing, see the article on missing custom reports and charts; for saved views, see the article on saving reports and saved views.

Built-in templates are missing for one person

The built-in report templates require the Full level of Reports access. Anyone below that — View, for example — never sees them in the catalog or the menu, and gets no error explaining why, which is exactly the "they're just not there" description.

Raising that person's Reports access to Full makes the templates appear. Note this is a different question from whether they can open reports at all: a View-level user can still work with the reports your dealership built and shared with them, which is why the problem looks selective.

The custom report list changes when you switch lots

A report can be shared with specific roles. When it is, your access is checked against the role you hold at the lot you are currently in, not against every role you hold anywhere.

So the same person, signed in as the same user, can see a role-shared report at one store and not at the other, because their role differs between the two. This is expected. If a report should be visible at both stores, either share it more widely than by role, or make sure the person holds the matching role at both lots.

Built-in reports can't be starred

The Favourites tab only holds reports your dealership built. Built-in templates have no star, and there is no setting that adds one.

If you want a built-in report in your Favourites, the way to get it there is to build your own version of it — your report can then be starred like any other. This also gives you saved views and exports that follow your on-screen columns, neither of which built-in templates offer.

Deleting a report you built

The confirmation is honest: deleting a report cannot be undone from within DeskManager Online. There is no recycle bin and no restore button anywhere in the product.

The deleted report is not immediately destroyed on the server, though, so recovery is sometimes possible — but only through support, and it is not something you can do yourself. If you have just deleted a report by mistake, contact support promptly rather than rebuilding it, and mention the report's exact name and roughly when it was deleted.

The same applies to charts, which are deleted from the Charts page with the same warning.