I think the issue is that there is a steep initial learning curve. Once you learn it, the reporting tool is very flexible. When you're new, flexibility looks like outrageous complexity. I would make a couple of recommendations to the F1 development staff:
(1) Remove all the suffix reports (i.e. -E). If it is a seperate report, give it a seperate number. If it is a seperate format, that should be handled using the format drop down list. I understand that sometimes an excel format requires an extra option, so put those into the regular report and say that they only apply to the excel format or the PDF format or the HTML format, as the case may be. This would drastically reduce the number of available reports and make it simpler to find what you needed.
(2) Provide a PDF sample of EVERY report, that you can click on and view without going to look at the full description. It should also have some sort of actual demo data, not just the header titles.
(3) Provide a summary of the report layout at the top of the description. For example, what information is shown in the columns, what information is shown in the rows, and how is that information grouped (by RLC, by ZIP Code, by Household Status, etc). This should be searchable.
(4) A more expansive tool for finding people. As other people have mentioned, this should be very similar to query builder, and should have two parts, include people, and exclude people. The include section should have the ability to select to include people based on household information, attributes, activities, assignments, contacts, etc, etc. and the same information should be in exclude. I would think that this would be completely seperate from the reporting feature.After each selection, F1 should run an AJAX calculator that will tell you how many records are included in your selection, then you can click a button to get a spreadsheet of the results..
(5) Improve the RLC selection process, including but not limited to, being able to set a default RLC for reports. In my case, I am a department head under children's ministry. When I run reports that require an RLC selection, I use the same selections every time I am running a report for my ministry. With the way that we have this set up, I have to select 3 service types, then 5 Rs out of about 20, about 12 Ls out of 30 or so, and about 30 Cs out of 50. I have saved reports that help, but I am constantly finding new reports that have a different information display that is helpful for particular projects, and every time I go into run those reports, I have to go through and select my RLCs all over again.
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Matt Beeman
Website Project Manager, Marketing Ministries