Steps for simple change to existing report

[sonicthoughts]

The "Event Participant Report (List) - Template" report does not include order by/group by "role".  I'm a system builder, not a developer, and want to modify the existing template, or create a new template to include this field.  I searched the documentation for current (4.3) best practice and am looking for a simple, straightforward way to do this if such a thing exists. 

I have found lot's of information on how to create a custom report, some conflicting, some obsolete.  Here is my "journey":
CiviCRM user and administrator guide says "See the Developer Guide" for more information on custom report templates.  I couldn't find anything in the developer guide however.

I found nothing doing a search on the documentation wiki for "Report Templates" or "Custom Report" in 4.3.

I found a forum topic, that referenced: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC43/CiviReport+Reference which has a caveat "the PHP/TPL code for CiviReport. The content has been unceremoniously merged – and it should now be reconciled".  I tried following instructions, but it seems to focus on creating a new report.  It also referenced: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC42/Create+a+Report-Template+Extension which is only available in 4.2 docs.

Here I found a wonderfully simple set of instructions "Copy an Existing Report" which is summarized as:

• Navigate to the "civicrm/CRM/Report/Form/" within your CiviCRM source tree
• Determine the class-name of the original report. (For example, the activity report is in the class "CRM_Report_Form_Activity".)
• Return to your extensions directory and run the "generate:report-ext" command, e.g.

I followed the instructions and now have a report extension that works. 

I am not sure if this is the "best" method (it seems a bit heavy to have to write an extension to edit a report) but it does work