Issue Manager’s reporting functionality is highly customizable. Numerous pre-installed reports and report templates provide out-of-the-box options for a wide range of reporting needs. Simple GUI-based tools allow you to edit Issue Manager’s pre-installed reports and to create reports and queries of your own. For advanced users with SQL knowledge, there is virtually no limit to how data can be queried and presented in reports.
Sample report
Below is the code of a pre-installed report called Issues in <state> by Inbox. This report has not undergone editing via Issue Manager GUI-based tools or SQL. By default, this report returns all issues that are in a specified state (Arbitrate in this example). The GROUP BY setting specifies that issues are to be ordered by inbox.
SELECT r.InboxAssigned, COUNT(DefectID) "NrOfIssues" FROM IM_V_Defects r INNER JOIN (SELECT DISTINCT issues.IssueID_pk as id FROM IM_V_Defects issues WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE issues.ProjectID = 98 AND issues.Status= 'Arbitrate') data ON r.IssueID_pk = data.id GROUP BY InboxAssigned ORDER BY r.InboxAssigned ASC
The basic properties of each report are listed on the report’s Properties tab. The properties that are tracked are:
- Report name - The name of the report (customizable)
- Report ID - The report’s system-defined ID
- Description - A description of the report (customizable)
- Created On - The date the report was created (default reports are created upon creation of and connection to a database)
- Created By - The user who created the report (default reports are created by the user admin)
- Changed On - The date the report was last modified.
- Changed By - The user who last modified the report.
- Renderer - The report template that is currently assigned to the report.
Editing report properties
Procedure To edit the properties of a report:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 Select the report in the Reports tree.
3 On the Properties tab, click the Edit button.
4 On the Edit Report dialog, modify the Name and Description of the report as required.
5 Ensure that the Share this report with other users checkbox is selected if you intend to have this report shared with other users.
6 Depending on whether the selected report is “simple” or “advanced”, you may do one of the following:
- Simple report: You can modify the Selection criteria—and thus changing the results of the selected report—or you can click the Advanced Query button to modify the SQL query code.
- Advanced report: If you have familiarity with SQL, you may edit the query code in the Report data query field. To assist you in editing SQL queries, a drop-list of function placeholders (i.e., “variables”) is available. To insert one of the available pre-defined functions, select the corresponding placeholder from the Insert placeholder drop-list.
Note If you manually edit the SQL code for the query, it is recommended that, once complete, you click the Check SQL button to confirm your work.
See “Creating New Reports” for detailed information about selection criteria and modifying SQL queries.
7 Once you have completed editing the report’s properties, click Finish to save your settings.
To aggregate the results from multiple reports into the currently selected report, you can add subreports. When adding a report as a subreport, the result columns and rows of the subreport are concatenated to the results of the selected report.
Procedure To add a report as a subreport:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 Select the report in the Reports tree.
3 On the Properties tab, click the Add Subreport button.
4 On the Add Subreport dialog, select the subreport you want to have appended to the current report by selecting it from the Select Subreport drop-list box.
5 Click OK to complete the addition of the subreport. Subreports appear on the associated report’s Properties tab in a section called Subreports.
Procedure To delete a subreport:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 Select the report in the Reports tree that has the associated subreport that you want to delete.
3 On the Properties tab, click the Delete icon (in the Action column of the Subreports table) of the subreport you want to delete.
4 Click Yes on the confirmation dialog to confirm the deletion.
Issue Manager report templates render report data into formats that meet your specific needs. Templates can take the form of MS Excel spreadsheets, BIRT RCP Designer report templates, XML, or CSV files. See “Customizing Report Templates” for information on downloading and editing report templates.
Parameters are customizable statement elements. Parameters can be defined any time before a report execution by simply changing them in the Parameters tab. The syntax of a parameter is:
${parametername|defaultvalue|guiname}
Defaultvalue and guiname are optional. Parameter names cannot contain whitespace characters.
When a report has parameters associated with it, it is possible to edit the values of the parameters before each report execution. Parameter values are stored in the current user context (i.e., edited values are available only to the user who performs the edits). When parameter values are not specified for a given report execution, the default values from the report definition are used.
When a report has subreports assigned to it, the parameters of those subreports are also shown in the Parameters tab and the values are stored only within the context of the selected report (i.e, the values are only used in conjunction with the current subreport configuration).
When creating new reports, parameters are the values that are defined on the Create New Report dialog in the Selection criteria area. See “Creating New Reports” for details.
Procedure To edit a report’s parameters:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 Select a report in the Reports tree.
3 Click the Parameters tab. If the report has parameters defined for it, the parameters will be listed there.
4 Click the Edit Parameters button.
5 On the Edit Parameters dialog, edit the Label or Default Value of the listed parameters as required.
6 Click OK to save your changes.
The Data tab serves as a read-only result preview that shows the result parameters and values of the selected report in tabular format. The first row contains meta information about the current report that comes from the report template.
Note Only the first 100 result rows are displayed by default. Alternate view options can be selected from the drop-down list (Show all rows, Top 500 rows, Top 1000 rows).
Select the Show header checkbox to have the additional meta properties for the report (Name, Project, Description, etc.) displayed in Data view in tabular format.
Viewing charts
The Chart tab relies on Issue Manager’s internal reporting engine to create standard charts and graphs from the data retrieved by the selected report query.
A number of standard chart types are available (area chart, bar chart, horizontal stacked bar chart, line chart, pie chart, and stacked bar chart). Four display properties are also configurable for each chart type.
Procedure To display a chart:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 Select a report in the Reports tree for which you wish to view a chart.
3 Select the Chart tab to display the default chart.
4 To select a required chart type, click the Change button.
5 On the Select Chart Type dialog, select a chart type.
6 Select those view properties that you wish to have applied to the chart (3D view, Show horizontal grid lines, Show vertical grid lines, and Show legend).
7 Specify an option for how these chart options are to be saved:
- Select For current user only to have these chart settings override the report’s standard settings whenever the current user views this chart.
- Select As report standard to have these chart settings presented to all users who don’t have overriding user settings defined. This setting does not affect individual user settings.
8 Click OK to display the new chart type.
Note The chart configurations you define here become the defaults for this report.
Note When standard charts and graphs are not able to deliver the specific data you require, or when they can’t display data in a required format, you can customize the appearance of queried data via Issue Manager’s reporting functionality, as described in the following section, “Reports”.
Opening a chart in a new window
To open the current chart in a separate browser window, click the Open in new window icon at the top of the Chart tab.
To print the current chart, click the Print icon at the top of the Chart tab. The chart data then appears in a new window in printable format. Your system’s print dialog is also displayed. Configure print settings as necessary and click OK to print the chart.
Removing a chart only removes the currently selected chart template from the selected report, it doesn’t remove the chart template entirely.
Procedure To remove the current chart’s template:
1 Click the chart’s Delete icon.
2 On the Remove Chart dialog:
- Select Remove user settings (and revert to report standard) to have the current user’s chart settings deleted along with the chart. The chart will subsequently be displayed according to the report’s standard settings. If no standard settings have been defined, the chart cannot be displayed. Note that this option is only available when the current user has defined specific chart settings.
- Select Remove standard chart settings of report to have any standard settings deleted along with the chart. User-specific settings are not affected by this option. Note that this option is only available when standard chart settings have been defined for a report.
Click OK to delete the chart template. If required, you can click the <Click here to choose a chart type> link to assign a new chart template to the selected report.
The Report tab lets you select a predefined template for your report. A drop-down list provides a selection of all available report templates. In addition to many system-installed templates, any custom report templates that may have been uploaded from Administration/Reports/Custom Reports are also available here (see the SilkCentral Administration Guide for details on setting up and uploading custom report templates).
Alternately you can download an existing template by selecting the Properties tab, and then clicking the download link that corresponds to the report format you are working with (Excel, BIRT, CSV, or XML). From there you can customize the template to your needs. See “Creating New Reports” and “Customizing Report Templates” for more details.
Procedure To upload a template from your local system:
1 Select the report to which you want to have the template associated.
2 Select the Report tab.
3 Click the Click here to upload a new report template link to open the Upload Template dialog.
4 Give the template a meaningful Name and Description.
5 In the Projects field, select the project to which you would like to make the template available. Or select All Projects to have the template associated with all projects.
6 Click the Browse button. Then browse to and select the template on your local system.
7 Click the OK button to upload the template.
Viewing reports
As each template expects a certain data format to produce a useful graph, not all templates can be applied to all report queries. For example, selecting the Four Values Per Row As Horizontal Bar template to display the Requirements Status Overview report works because this particular MS Excel template requires exactly the four values (failed, passed, not executed, and not covered) that the report query delivers. You will receive an error message if you attempt to generate a report via an incompatible report template.
Procedure To generate a report:
1 In the Reports tree, select the report you wish to generate.
2 Select the Report tab.
3 Click the Change button.
4 From the Select Report Template dialog, select the template you wish to use.
5 Click OK to display the report.
6 (optional) If necessary, select an alternate view magnification for the report from the drop-down list. 100% is the default magnification. Other options are 50%, 75%, 150%, and 200%.
Note When report fields contain ‘X’s instead of data it is an indication that the report server had trouble processing the template. To learn why this may have happened, ask your system administrator to examine the StyleReport.log file located in the ...<Issue Manager>\Log directory of the server machine.
How you save a report locally depends on whether you have selected a BIRT report template or an Excel template. If you have selected an Excel template, simply click the Download link on the Report tab. This will invoke Microsoft Excel on your local computer and the report will be loaded automatically.
If you’ve selected a BIRT report template, use the following procedure:
Procedure To export the current BIRT report as PDF:
1 Click the Reports button on the Workflow Bar.
2 In the Reports tree, select the report that you want to save.
3 Click the Report tab.
4 Click the PDF icon on the Report view toolbar.
5 From the File Download dialog box, click the Save button to save the PDF document to a location of your choice.
Removing report templates
To remove the current report’s template, click the report’s Delete icon and select Yes on the subsequent confirmation dialog.