The drag and drop report builder assist you to create both simple and sophisticated analytical reports. The steps available through the builder are determined by some of the options you choose along the way, including:
- The type of builder you use
- The data source you build on
- The fields you use in the report, and the layout defined by them
- The filters and/or sections you add to the report
- The addition of Related Reports, Drill Functionality, and Sub Queries
Included in the report builder are a number of possible steps:
Create
The first step in building any report is selecting the type of report you wish to run, and the data source required. Your organization may have many views and data sources so selecting the correct one is critical prior to building your report.
To create a new report, click the Create link located on your main navigation bar and select the Report option from the drop-down menu.
This will open the Create Report page. In this step you will select the type of report you wish to create, how you want to write the report and to select the source of the reports data.
Note: Only users with CREATE access to the reporting function will be able to create new reports.
Drag and Drop builder allows users to use a pre-defined data view to build their reports. All business logic is built into the view. CSV Import can take place as part of this builder, if the user has permission to access these options.
Views are a collection of data sets, relating to common fields. For the purposes of this training, we'll just be using the sale view.
After selecting the Drag and Drop authoring tool and selecting the View, you will be presented with the following display:
Data
The report data section allows you to define the data that will actually be reported on, as well as the look and feel of your report, the filters to be used, and whether a chart or drill through should be displayed.
Select the items from the view that you wish to include in your report and drag them into the appropriate section of the screen.
It's worth noting that views with a yellow icon are dimensions, which can be thought of as lists of results.
Blue views are metrics, or results which can be added together (such as $$ amounts, the number of times an event has occurred, etc.).
Basic rule of thumb is that if your result has a name, it will be a dimension, if it's a number, then it will be a metric.
If you'd like to know more about any of the views, simply hover the mouse over the view and the description will appear.
Charts
The Charts page allows you to build visualizations based on the table created in the Data step. This is where you'll define what is represented on a horizontal, vertical axis, or even size of the data displayed depending on the type of chart.
If you have a way that you'd like the data to be displayed, simply select the type of chart that you'd like to see. Alternatively, you can leave the system set to Auto chart and Impos Analytics will choose the best way to represent your data.
Please note that you can only show data which has been used in the previous data step. If you wish to add more information into your chart, you'll first have to add it in the Data phase.
Related Reports
Create relationships between the draft report and other content using Drill Through and Co-Display reports. This will not appear in all reports depending on the way the report is structured.
Output
The Output page allows you to format the report, set up a multi-chart canvas, and other functions. You'll also be able to test how your report will look like in future here. The re-sizing and positioning of the reports and charts are all done via drag and drop.
You can always go back and forth through each phase in order to get the report to display just the way you'd like it to.
Report
Once you are happy with the report, use the "report" heading to save the report. You'll also be able to specify whether this report is available just for you, others, or whether you're allowed to email it out or not.
Email Broadcast
This feature allows users to select a type of report and schedule regular emails with selected data. See a full step by step with Yellowfin here.