Working with Excel Templates

Principles of Operation

The Excel Channel renders supported nodes from the abstract report by copying cell patterns from the Excel template(s) and “stamping” them on the Excel report:

• Cell style is taken from the template.

• Cell context is taken from data in the report.

• Unsupported nodes are silently ignored, thus a report intended for Word or online should always (at least partially) be convertible to an Excel document.

Cell Patterns

A cell pattern is a single, rectangular range of cells in a template with a name assigned to it. Names are assigned in Excel either by selecting a cell or cell range, then defining a name for it, or in the Name Manager.

See https://bmpi.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CRDOC/pages/3252125697/Working+with+Excel+Templates#Supported-Node-Types for the names to be assigned.

• The style of the cells is copied to the stamped cells in the Excel report. This includes format, font, row height and column width, wrapping, colors, conditional formatting, merging, etc.

• Some patterns are optional. These are only rendered if defined in the template.

• The content of the cells is evaluated, then copied. All ${...} expressions in the content will be treated as JavaScript expressions on report specific data.

Style and Language Specific Cell Patterns

Whenever a pattern is searched for a node with a specific style, the following names are checked in order:

1. <style>.<pattern>.<reportLanguage>

2. <style>.<pattern>

3. <pattern>.<reportLanguage>

4. <pattern>

Example: the header pattern when rendering a node with style MyStyle in language de is obtained by looking for MyStyle.header.de, MyStyle.header,header.de, header.

Templates

The template handling of the Excel channel is very similar to the Word Channel. Each Excel report needs at least a main template to render correctly:

• The main template’s name is taken from the styleSheet property of the report type’s "excel" outputFormat. If not specified, the default excel_standard.xlsx is assumed.

• The main template can contain any number of cell patterns.

• The first worksheet in the main template defines the page setup (page size, margins, page header and footer) of each worksheet in the resulting report.

• The cell patterns defined in a template can be distributed over multiple worksheets to facilitate their organisation. Apart from that and the special role of the first worksheet, the worksheets in a template are not related to the worksheets in the rendered Excel.

Cinnamon may also be configured to support additional templates providing installation wide defaults for cell patterns, using the otherExcelTemplateIds configuration option.

Language Specific Templates

Each template used (the main template and the configured additional templates) can be present in language specific variants. When e.g. rendering in language de, a styleSheet: "abc.xlsx" will select the template file template_abc.de.xlsx if present, otherwise the language independent file template_abc.xlsx. Language specific templates often add more redundancy and maintenance to a setup, but may be easier to manage than language specific cell patterns in some cases.

Page headers and footers

Page headers and footers set in the first worksheet of the main template are copied to all worksheets produced. They may contain ${...} expressions, like cell patterns. The data attributes supported are the same as for header and footer in https://bmpi.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CRDOC/pages/3252125697/Working+with+Excel+Templates#Common-Cell-Patterns.

Supported Node Types

The Excel Channel supports a limited set of report nodes. The other node types do not produce output in the Excel document.

Common Cell Patterns

For all supported nodes, the following cell patterns are rendered:

"data": {
  "mainTitle": <node mainTitle>,
  "subTitle": <node subTitle>,
  "reportName": <report name>,
  "params": <report execution parameters>
}

"data": {
  "id": <issue id>,
  "description": <issue description>,
  "severity": "error",
  "source": "rendering"
}

Common Parameters

For all supported nodes, the following parameters are considered:

"parameters": {
  "style": "ReclWhTax",
  ...
}

"parameters": {
  "renderingOptions": {
    "excel": {
      "worksheetName":  {
        "resolved": "Rückforderbare QST"
      },
      "repeatHeaders": true
    }
  },
  ...
}

Tables: VerticalTableNode

Not surprisingly, a VerticalTableNode is rendered as rows and columns in Excel. There are two ways of rendering an table in Excel: styled and generic.

Styled Table Rendering

By specifying a style on the VerticalTableNode, the table will be rendered row by row. Each row, including the header row, corresponds to a cell pattern. Styled rendering therefore allows full control over the layout in Excel and as well as subselection and reordering of columns.

Generic Table Rendering

VerticalTableNodes without a style are rendered in a generic way. This mode of rendering is similar to the Word Channel: each column is rendered individually, depending on its value type.

Worksheets: SectionNode

A SectionNode renders its titles, and may start a new worksheet.

Simple Text: ParagraphNode

A ParagraphNode is renders its content.

Arbitrary Data: DataNode

A DataNode renders the contents of its data object. It can be used to render arbitrary content to the Excel document, as the type of the data object itself is user defined.

Since the cell patterns depend on the type of data in the object, a DataNode must have a style.

Production Errors: ErrorNode

An ErrorNode (typically the result of an error during report production) renders the error details.

Debugging Excel Rendering