1. Overview

Advanced PDF Report Generator (DoliReports Designer) transforms Dolibarr into a full professional platform for generating dynamic PDF reports from predefined templates. It removes any need for Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, JasperReports, Crystal Reports or BIRT: every corporate document and report can be designed and produced directly from the data already stored in Dolibarr.

The module ships a modern drag & drop visual designer, a ready-to-use template library, a dynamic variable engine, SQL data sources over every Dolibarr table, a mass generator, automated scheduling with multi-channel delivery, digital signature and archiving, a full audit journal, and a decisional reporting suite — all natively integrated with the standard Dolibarr modules (Third parties, Products, Invoices, Orders, Quotations, Projects, Stock, HR, Accounting).

2. Architecture & Navigation

The module adds a dedicated top menu ("PDF Reports") and the following left-menu sections:

·       Dashboard — real-time KPIs, status kanban and charts

·       PDF Templates — create, duplicate, version, publish, archive, preview

·       Designer — visual drag & drop template editor

·       Blocks — the individual design elements of each template

·       Themes — colours, fonts, header/footer styles, watermark

·       Generator — mass generation wizard

·       Variables — dynamic token catalog

·       Data sources — table / SQL / module / API connections

·       Scheduled reports — time-based and event-based automation

·       History — every generated report

·       Notifications — success, error, reminder and alert messages

·       Library — ready-to-use template catalog

·       Audit log — full traceability journal

·       Reporting — decisional analytics with CSV export

·       Setup — configuration and demonstration data

3. Modern Dashboard

The dashboard uses a dedicated visual charter (dark blue, sky blue, white, light grey, orange accent) with a gradient hero banner. It presents ten KPI cards (templates, published templates, reports today, reports this month, reports sent, errors and failure rate, average size, average generation time, active users, favourites, disk usage), a report-status kanban (generated / sent / archived / error) and interactive charts (daily evolution over 30 days, monthly evolution over 12 months, top used templates, distribution by object type), plus design-asset and automation KPI zones.

4. Visual Drag & Drop Designer

The Designer is a complete graphical editor. A palette of block types is available on the left, an A4 canvas sits in the centre where blocks are positioned and moved with the mouse, and a categorised panel of dynamic variables is shown on the right. Block positions are persisted via the "Save layout" action.

Available block types:

·       Text, Image, Logo

·       Table (dynamic / pivot)

·       Chart and KPI indicator

·       QR Code and Barcode (Code128, EAN13, EAN8, UPC, DataMatrix, PDF417)

·       Signature

·       HTML / SVG

5. Template Library

The library provides dozens of ready-to-use models classified by category and industry, each with a rating and a download counter. Examples include invoices, quotations, orders, delivery notes, service contracts, payslips, financial reports, ISO quality reports, VAT (CA3) reports, tax donation receipts, expense reports, GPAO production reports, barcode labels and consolidated multi-company reports.

6. Dynamic Variable Engine

Thousands of dynamic tokens are available and resolved at generation time. Variables are grouped by data source (third party, invoice, order, quotation, product, project, user, HR, accounting, system). Examples: {client.nom}, {client.email}, {facture.ref}, {facture.total_ttc}, {commande.date}, {produit.label}, {produit.prix}, {projet.titre}, {commercial}, {date}, {qrcode.facture}, {codebarre.produit}.

7. Data Sources & SQL

Data sources connect templates to every Dolibarr table (invoices, orders, quotations, third parties, products, projects, stock movements, accounting entries, HR, bank, interventions) or to custom SQL queries with joins, filters and field counts — enabling dynamic, cross-joined and pivot tables.

8. Generator & Multi-channel Delivery

The generator produces reports in bulk: select a template, an object type, a number of documents, an output format (PDF, PDF/A, Excel, CSV, DOCX, HTML) and a delivery method (download, email, FTP, SFTP, cloud). Each run records generation time, file size, page count and status, and writes an audit entry.

9. Scheduling & Automation

The scheduler automates generation with minute / hourly / daily / weekly / monthly / yearly frequencies or Dolibarr event triggers (invoice validation, quotation validation, unpaid invoice, etc.), including recipients, next/last run, run count and cloud target (NextCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, internal server).

10. History, Audit & Reporting

Every generated report is stored with full metadata. The audit journal traces all operations (create, modify, delete, download, send, login, error, validate) with object, user, IP address and timestamp. The reporting suite offers six analyses (usage, top templates, top users, by format, schedules, audit) with CSV export and printing.

11. Data Model

The module defines 10 database objects (all tables prefixed llx_aprg_):

12. Permissions

Fine-grained rights across 8 groups (20 permissions): template (read/write/delete), generator (read/write), variable (read/write/delete), schedule (read/write/delete), report (read/write/delete), library (read/write/delete), audit (read), reporting (read), plus module administration. Read and write are granted by default on activation so the module is immediately usable.

13. Technical Quality

·       Dolibarr development standards: descriptor, hooks, triggers, CommonObject classes, official APIs

·       Compatible with recent stable Dolibarr versions (16+) and PHP 7.1 to 8.x

·       Protection against SQL injection (escaped queries), XSS (dol_escape_htmltag) and CSRF (token / newToken)

·       Schema self-healing on activation (missing columns auto-added)

·       Responsive interface and optimised queries

·       Error logging via dol_syslog and graceful recovery

14. Internationalization

The module is fully translated using the official Dolibarr translation system into five languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian and German (266 keys each).

15. Installation & Demonstration Data

Install by copying the advancedpdfreportgenerator folder into htdocs/custom/ and activating it from the module manager. A complete demonstration dataset (24 templates, 216 blocks, 40 variables, 12 data sources, 130 reports, 12 schedules, 30 library models, 6 themes, 28 notifications, 70 audit events) is created automatically on first activation. The configuration page provides "Load demonstration data" and "Clear demonstration data" buttons; the purge removes only demo-tagged rows and never affects real data.

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