Report Designer User Guide
This guide teaches you how to design pixel-perfect PDF documents such as bills of lading, pick lists, packing slips, labels and inventory reports, and how to turn them into finished PDFs with your data.
Who it is for. This guide is for template authors: business analysts, WMS implementation consultants and anyone else who builds documents. You don't need to know how to program. If something here depends on how Report Designer was installed in your company (where templates are stored, the render service address, the license), ask your administrator.
New here? Read Introduction (5 minutes), then do the Quick start (10 minutes). After that, use the rest of the guide as a reference.
Contents
| # | Chapter | You will learn |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | What the designer and the render service do, and the key concepts |
| 2 | Quick start: your first packing slip | Start from a template, change it, bind a field, preview, export, render |
| 3 | The designer workspace | Toolbar, side panels, canvas, rulers, status bar |
| 4 | Page setup and bands | Page size, margins, headers and footers, and how content flows and breaks across pages |
| 5 | Elements reference | Every element type and every property |
| 6 | Data binding and expressions | {{ field | preview text }}, functions, formatting and recipes |
| 7 | Tables | Columns, totals, form-style blank rows, page splitting, sorting and grouping |
| 8 | Repeaters and labels | Free-form repeated blocks, label sheets and 4×6 labels |
| 9 | Barcodes and QR codes | Formats, GS1-128 and SSCC, check digits and scanner-friendly sizing |
| 10 | Fonts and typography | Bundled fonts, custom fonts, text overflow and spacing |
| 11 | International documents | Document language, Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, localized formatting, designer UI language |
| 12 | Template gallery | The 20 built-in supply-chain templates and how to adapt them |
| 13 | Preview, export and rendering | Placeholder preview, warnings, exporting JSON, rendering PDFs, batches |
| 14 | Licensing | The PREVIEW and TRIAL VERSION watermarks, and installing a license |
| 15 | Troubleshooting and FAQ | Fixes for the most common problems, and what each warning means |
| A | Keyboard and mouse shortcuts | Every shortcut on one page |
| B | Expression function reference | Every function, with examples |
| C | Glossary | Terms used in this guide |
Conventions used in this guide
- Bold text is a label you see in the designer, for example Preview PDF or the Fields tab.
Monospaceis something you type, such as an expression like{{ shipTo.name }}.- Measurements are given in points (pt) unless stated otherwise. 72 pt = 1 inch ≈ 25.4 mm. The designer can display inches, millimeters or points (see Report panel).
- Ctrl/Cmd means Ctrl on Windows and Linux and ⌘ Cmd on macOS.
Tip: gives you a faster way to do something.
Note: explains a detail worth knowing.
Warning: describes something that can cause wrong output or lost work.
The examples use one sample shipment, examples-data.json. Every expression example in this guide is checked
against it automatically, so the results shown are the results you will get.