Empower Tip: Using, Modifying, and Creating Report Methods

In this tip, we will learn about electronic sign-off in Report Methods. There is an ongoing trend toward electronic reports and moving away from printed reports. That is driven by the green initiative in many companies and the fact that storing hard copies is cumbersome. Electronic sign-off provides many benefits as we will see in this and subsequent Empower Tips.

STEP 1 Your Empower System Administrator has most likely configured the system policies regarding electronic signatures to conform with company SOPs. For example, you can automatically ‘Lock Channels after Sign Off 2’ and/or automatically ‘Save report image (as PDF) after Sign Off’.

In the Report Publisher window, you may want to add the ‘Sign Off Table’ to the Report Method. This displays sign off information, such as ‘who signed off’ and ‘when’.

Right-click away from any report groups in the Main Page View and select ‘Method Properties’. Check the box titled, ‘Allow this method to be used in Sign Off’. Click ‘OK’ and save all changes to the Report Method.

In Preview, the ‘Sign Off’ tool is greyed out because there are multiple pages. Use the next page tool to review all pages.

Once you reach the last page the ‘Sign Off’ tool is available and can be clicked.

Enter your ‘Empower username and password’, then select a Sign Off ‘Reason’ from the dropdown. Click ‘Sign Off’.

The Result Sign-off table is now populated.

The ‘Sign-Offs’ tab in the project is populated as well.

It’s that easy!