Advanced Field Settings in ConnectWise Report Writer

Advanced field settings give you fine-grained control over how each column displays, groups, and behaves in your reports. Access these settings per field in the Fields tab of any report.

Display and layout

• Column Group — Applies a shared label across multiple consecutive columns. Any column with the same label is included in the group.
• Multiline Header — Allows a column header to wrap across lines when it exceeds the column width. Each space in the header text acts as a line break.
• Hide this Field — Hides the column from report output. Use this when you need a field for an expression but don’t want it shown to users.
• Width — Sets the column width in pixels.
• Label Justification — Aligns the column header left, right, or center.
• Value Justification — Aligns cell values left, right, or center.
• Italic — Displays column values in italics.
• Bold — Displays column values in bold.

Sorting and grouping

• Sort (z-a) — Sorts this field in descending order.
• Separator — Breaks out an Analysis Grid by this field. Use this instead of VG in Analysis Grid reports — VG defines the hierarchy, Separator handles visual grouping.
• Break Page After VG (PDF) — Inserts a page break in printed output each time the field value changes.
• Group by Expression — Includes this field in the SQL GROUP BY clause. Use when the column is expression-based and needs to be grouped rather than aggregated.

Subtotals

Subtotal Function — Sets a custom aggregation function for this column’s subtotals. Default is Sum. Options include standard SQL functions.

If you set this to Expression, a text box appears where you write the subtotal formula. Use the field’s description (not the field name) in subtotal expressions. For example, if the field is sr_service_recid with the description “Ticket”, write [ticket] — not [sr_service_recid].

Note: Subtotal Function only affects bottom subtotals, not side totals.

Drill-downs

Subreport — Sets a child report to open when the user selects a value in this column. The list includes only reports that have a drill-down key configured.

Note: The Automatic option tries to match by drill-down key, but it can’t distinguish between two subreports that share the same key. If results are wrong, assign the subreport explicitly.

Drill-Down Style controls how the child report opens:

• Link — Opens in the same browser window.
• Link (New Window) — Opens in a new browser window.
• Embedded — Embeds the drill-down results directly in the main report.
• Popup — Opens results in a pop-up.
• Hover — Shows the subreport on hover. Available for charts only.
• ComboKey — Use on the second drill-down key when you need to pass values from both key fields to the subreport.

URL — Defines a custom redirect URL when a cell value is selected. Use this instead of a subreport when linking out to an external resource or a specific page in ConnectWise.

Conditional formatting

Text Highlight and Cell Highlight

Both follow the same syntax: a to b:color;c to d:othercolor and so on.

• Text Highlight — Applies a color to the text in cells within a defined value range.
• Cell Highlight — Applies a color to the entire cell background. You can combine both on the same column — for example, a dark cell background with light text.

Syntax details:

• Separate range-color pairs with semicolons: 5 to 6:Blue;7 to 10:Red
• A color without a range after the first pair acts as a catch-all: 1 to 10:Red;Blue colors values 1–10 red and everything else blue.
• Percentages work as ranges: 0% to 20%:Red

Note: Do not end your statement with a trailing semicolon. "1 to 10:Red;" will throw an index error.

Enter a color name from the Style tab’s Border color dropdown, or any HTML hex color code.

Gradient Cells Shading

Shades cells proportionally based on their value relative to the column’s min and max. The lowest value gets the lightest shade; the highest gets the darkest. Useful for quick visual ranking.

Value Ranges

Replaces numeric values with text labels. For example, setting 0 to 10:Under displays “Under” for any value between 0 and 10. Follows the same syntax as Text Highlight.

Expressions

Expression — Defines a custom mathematical or SQL expression as the column’s output value.

Expression Type — Specifies the data type of the expression output. Set this when you need to control how ConnectWise treats the result (for example, as a date or integer rather than a string).