Forms in ConnectWise Report Writer

The Design Form button in Report Writer lets you reshape a report’s output into a custom form — either through a WYSIWYG editor or raw HTML. You can mix static content with live data pulled from your ConnectWise database.

Design Form editor

Select Design Form on any report to open the form designer. Two editing modes are available:

• Editor — WYSIWYG canvas. Drag and arrange elements visually.
• HTML — Source code view. Select the HTML button to toggle to it.

To embed live data in either mode, wrap the field name or description (from the report’s Fields tab) in square brackets: [FieldName].

Repeating data

When you need a block of content to repeat for each record, use a repeater tag pair around that content:

Open tag	Close tag
[repeater]	[/repeater]

For example, you can display a ticket number once and list all associated records beneath it, rather than repeating the ticket number on every row.

Note: For repeater tags to persist across HTML structural elements (such as table rows), wrap them in an HTML comment tag.

Forms toolbar

The toolbar gives you access to four insert types:

Field — Inserts any item from the report’s Fields tab.

Column — Inserts any item from the report’s Data Sources.

Subreport — Inserts a subreport tag at the cursor position.

Note: A subreport must be configured with a Drilldown key before it appears in this dropdown.

Smart Tag — Inserts one of three dynamic elements:

• Filters — Places a string describing the report’s active filters. Requires Show Filters in Report Description to be selected on the Filters tab.
• Date — Places a timestamp showing the current system time when the form renders.
• Sub Totals — Generates subtotals for a repeated numeric column. See Subtotals setup below.
• Repeater — Inserts a [repeater] tag block for repeating content without a nested sub-form.

Subtotals setup

To use the @Subtotal decorator on a repeated numeric column, three conditions must be in place:

1. Every field outside the repeater block must be visually grouped.
2. The Add Subtotals checkbox must be selected.
3. Append @Subtotal to the field name inside the repeater: [LineItemTotal@Subtotal].

Two placement rules apply:

• The @Subtotal decorator can only be used once per form.
• Place it outside the repeater being subtotaled, but inside any outer repeaters. If repeaters are nested by level, @Subtotal must sit one level above the fields it is totaling.