We’re just coming back from SAS Global Forum, and what a show! SAS Books was there to provide users with the highest-quality resources for learning SAS, and our users were there to tell us what new books they were most looking forward to reading. Kevin Smith's PROC TEMPLATE Made Easy: A Guide for SAS Users was one of those; it's the first on the subject, and customers told us it definitely fills an important space on their bookshelves.

I heard copies of the book went fast, so for those of you who weren't able to come to our booth at SAS Global Forum and see for yourselves, I asked Kevin to give us the top reasons why users should learn PROC TEMPLATE. Here's what he had to say:       

1. You'll be able to create styles that match your corporate color scheme, or just simply to your personal tastes.  This can make your reports a more cohesive part of your business documentation, and will set your reports apart from those using pre-defined styles.
2. While the book is about PROC TEMPLATE, style overrides in the Base reporting procedures overlap that domain.  Using the style override syntax provided by PROC TEMPLATE, you'll be able to add traffic lighting to your reports using PROC TABULATE, PROC PRINT, and PROC REPORT to make them easier to read and quicker to interpret.
3. PROC TEMPLATE is the key to becoming an ODS reporting wizard. As far as tricks go, I think one thing that most people don't know is that you can use a SAS expression or a SAS macro as a style attribute value to do fairly complex traffic lighting. With this sort of knowledge, you can present your analyses in reports that your managers will be able to clearly and quickly read and interpret.

Check it out for yourself by downloading a free excerpt on Creating and Customizing Table Templates, and then purchase the book to learn more.