Using IncludeFiles to reduce filter maintenance

[#1]

At my firm, we produce a lot of reports filtered to US Sales, Canadian Sales, Customer Service Reps, etc. These positions go through a fair amount of turnover, and when the filters were hard-coded in nPrinting, each change meant I had to go through (say) five or six different Sales Reports, and change the filter to add Tom, and remove Harry.

Now, I use IncludeFiles to eliminate the need to change filters. I created an Excel file with separate tabs for each groups, and in each tab, I put in the Group name, and the member ID.

Then, I have the following code in a text file:

This code is 'borrowed' from someone (Rob Wunderlich, maybe?) and I am just reusing it. It steps through the members, and creates a comma separated, quote delineated string, e.g 'BMOR', 'EKES', 'HPRI', 'JHAR', 'JSIL', which is then assigned to the variable "vUSSales".

Now, in my nPrinting filters, I can select the field "Sales Rep", and set the value equal to =$(vUSSales) <- Note that the "dollar-sign-expansion" is required. 

This means that our Admin staff can go into the Excel file, add or delete or modify the members of any group/value of any field that is to be used in a filter without knowing anything about nPrinting or QV, and, much more important, without my involvement. This has simplified and sped up our reporting process and eliminated a number of errors. I currently have 13 tabs in my Excel file, covering everything from Sales Rep to Holiday dates, to Titles to be searched.

[#2]

Should have added that in my script, one of my first lines is:

$(Must_Include=C:\IncludeFiles\UserGroups.txt);

I use Must_Include because it throws up an error message if there's a problem.