Export Manager

Export Groups vs. Export Types

In order to understand how the Export Manager works, it helps to understand the meaning of the following two terms.

An Export Group is a group of one or more Export Types. It lets you combine ways of viewing / exporting the data that possess the same characteristics. For example, the printer-friendly format (enabled by default) has three ways to view the data: table format, one-by-one and one-submission per page. Since they are so similar (they display the data in HTML), they are grouped together in the same group.

Export Types are the actual ways to display / generate the data, e.g. displaying all submissions in an HTML table, or in XML format.

Combining export types into groups has a number of benefits:

• In the UI, they are all displayed in the same line with the same icon. An additional dropdown is shown, listing the available export types.
• Certain features can be abstracted from the individual export type. For example, you can define a header and footer, add headers (e.g. to tell the browser to treat the export type as CSV, Excel or another format).
• You can define "global" settings for all export types, saving you the bother of having to set them again and again for all export types in the group, namely:
  • Permissions - who can use the export types in this group: administrators, all clients or a subset.
  • Action - should the file be opened in a popup, a new window or generate a file on the server.
  • Hide / Show - a simple way to hide / show all export types.