Attorneys need to quickly evaluate their caseload and analyze their firm’s progress. The Report Builder can give you a clear bird’s-eye view of your firm’s activity. A user can report on data for any project in which they are a follower or a collaborator.
Reports have a wide variety of uses, including:
- a list of incomplete tasks due in the next 7 days.
- a list of projects per attorney.
- a list of projects with an SOL coming in 90 days.
In addition to this article, there are tutorial videos on building reports that you can watch on the Report Builder. To learn more about running an Audit Report, read our Audit Report article.
Building a Report
The Report Builder contains four steps: the first three steps shape the report you need, and the fourth step allows you to view and configure the results.
To begin, navigate to the Report Builder. Click on the main menu in the top left corner. In the dropdown menu, hover over “My Reports” and then click “Build Reports.”
In the Report Builder, your saved reports are listed on the left-hand side. Here, the report creator’s name is included after the name of the saved report. On the right-hand side of the Report Builder, the report types are listed.
Select the Report
Under “Create New Report” you will find a list of options for a report. These report types dictate what the rows of your report will be: a list of projects = project data per row, a list of tasks = tasks per row, etc. For report types for custom Collection Sections, choose the Org and project type in the bottom right.
Choose the template with the information you would like listed in your report.
Set Up Columns
Choosing a report template will take you to the next page in the Report Builder, “Set Up Columns.” This is where you’ll choose which columns to include in your report. By default, only columns that are common across all project types will be available, like Client Name and Org Address. To enable project-type-specific columns, specify Org and Project type at the bottom right.
To include columns, move items to the “Report Columns” box on the right. To move items in and out of this box, click several items and then choose the left or right arrow, or double click on any single item. To find more items, search for the field name in quick select or search by category in the “Category Selector.” Any report can contain up to 50 columns; to exceed this limit, fuse multiple reports using Filevine Fusion.
When you’ve finished setting up columns, click on either “Choose Criteria” or “Run Report” along the top of the screen.
Choose Criteria
By default, reports will include data from all active projects in the report type that your user has access to. A report for a list of Collection Items, for instance, will pull in all collection items across all projects. On the “Choose Criteria” page, you can choose any additional limits for the data in your report. For example, you may want to limit the report to one project, or limit the data to the last thirty days.
To choose criteria, search in the “Filter criteria” search box in the top left, or click on the plus button to the right of a category to view the criteria in that category. Select the criteria you would like to add and click on the green “+ Add Criteria” button under the criteria categories. You are able to add as many criteria as you would like at once.
When criteria have been selected, they will appear on the righthand part of the page, organized by their criteria category. Here you will choose which filters you would like. For example, if you choose “Project Type is,” on this screen you will choose from a dropdown which project type you would like to filter for.
Criteria categories are organized in the menu by project section and then alphabetically. Many criteria that include project-level data points like hashtags and phases are organized under the “Project” section. Any team permissions criteria are housed in the “Team” section. There are also special criteria that are not under any section, including “Include Archived Projects,” which is the only way to include data from archived projects.
Once you’ve added all your criteria, select “Run Report” at the top.
Run Report
The Results page shows the report you created. You can organize the report you’ve generated in different ways using the drop-down menu on the right and changing the order and default sorting of the columns. You can also rename the report using the pencil icon next to the title.
Reports displayed in Filevine have unlimited rows. However, report exports to Excel will have a limit of 30,000 rows.
If you need to go back to change anything in the report, just click on the Set Up Columns or Select Criteria items in the bar at the top. Your information will be saved as you move between these pages.
Saving and Exporting
To save the report, select “Save/Export” at the top of your screen. Use the "Save As" button to save a copy to your saved reports and to bring up additional export and auto-report options. You can also rename, archive, and share the report here.
Learn more about exporting to Word and exporting to Excel.
Setting Up Auto-Reports
One of the options on the “Run Report” page is setting up auto-reports. Auto-reporting will email you the updated version of any report on a repeating weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, in either the morning or the evening. Auto-reporting can be used for things like upcoming due dates for tasks, statute of limitation deadlines, and audit reports. To set up an auto-report, follow the steps below.
If you are setting up auto-reporting for reports that have been shared with you, it is recommended that you save a copy of shared reports for you. This is to ensure that, in events where that user's account has any changes, your auto-report will not be affected.
- Open the “Auto-report Settings” window. Click on the "Auto-Report Settings" button of the Save/Export step in any of your saved or shared reports.
- Select a schedule frequency. From the dropdown menu, select either “Weekly,” “Monthly,” or “Yearly.” If at any time you wish to stop receiving emails, change the schedule frequency to "Off.”
- Select days. Choose which day(s) of the week, day(s) of the month, or month(s) of the year you would like the report sent to you by clicking the days or months you would like to receive this report.
- Select time of day. Toggle the button at the bottom of the “Auto-report Settings” window to either “Mornings” and “Evenings.”
- Save. Click the "Save" button to save the new settings.
Most Popular Reports
The video below gives a brief overview of how to build a report, and discusses how and when to use some of our most popular reports.
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