Administrators with the appropriate access rights can create report designs and then publish the designs and enable managers to access the designs.
Create report designs
You use Report Studio to design reports. Report Studio is a web-based report designer interface. It uses report data objects to provide the data for reports. You can create reports by dragging and dropping data and visual elements such as tables and charts into the layout pane. You can format and rearrange visual elements, sort, group, and filter data, and create computed columns and aggregate data. When you run the report design, the report viewer displays the report using all data.
To access Report Studio from the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup > Common Setup > Published Reports, then click Create Design
Note: You can also access Report Studio from Administration > Application Setup > Common Setup > Unpublished Reports, then click Create
From Report Studio, you can
- Select a report data object — A report data object is a collection of business objects defined in the application that can be used to create reports. For detailed information, see Create report data objects
- Use visualizations in a report design — You create a report design by dragging visual elements such as a table, crosstab, text, image, or chart from the Visualization tab and dropping it in the layout pane. For more information, see:
- Select, insert, and limit data displayed in a table — When you drag and drop a table element in the layout pane, the Table Builder wizard appears, enabling you to select and arrange the data fields to use in the table. Report Studio displays the data columns in the order in which you select them. Rearrange the data fields in Table Builder so that the columns appear in the logical order you expect. For more information, see Manage columns.
- When data sources contain more data than you need to display in your report design, you can limit the data retrieved using filters. Table Builder enables you to create a data set filter that narrows the scope of data retrieved from the data source and displayed in the report design. Data set filters can significantly improve design-time performance if the data set contains a large amount of data. For more information, see Filter data.
- Format data in a table — Format data in a table to improve the appearance of a report. Common formatting options include providing a report title, modifying column labels, formatting column data such as setting font properties and alignment, setting standard or custom data formats, and merging data from several columns in a data source to present it in a single field in the report design, where required. You can also specify page layout properties and adjust column width to enable your report design to accommodate the selected data whether viewed online or in PDF format. For more information, see Edit and format tables .
- When you insert data fields in a table, Report Studio displays the values in rows and columns and creates labels, or column headers that show the names of the data fields. These names are appropriate in a database, but usually are not suitable for a report. You typically edit the text in these column headers.
- You can sort, group, and suppress duplicate values as well as aggregate data, insert calculated data, and insert extras. See Organize data in a table, Insert calculated data, Aggregate data, and Insert extras for details.
- Save and view a report — Report Studio provides a preview of the changes you make, as you create and modify a report design. To view all the data, save and run the report. When you save a report, the report design file with a .rptdesign file-name extension contains all the information necessary to generate the report. Select Save and View
. Your web browser displays the generated report in the viewer. As you modify a report, save and run the report periodically, and view the changes made in the viewer to make sure the result is what you expect. - The default page size is Auto. Use the Auto page size to view reports in the viewer. The content adjusts to your screen size. If you plan to print a report, choose one of the fixed page sizes, for example Legal, or specify a custom page size.
- The user who creates a report design in Report Studio has write privilege on the file, and is therefore able to modify and save the file. Other users do not have write privilege, and therefore cannot modify the file. They must save the file to a different name or a different folder before they can modify the file.
- Work with standard and custom reports — Standard reports are domain-specific reports that are shipped with the product. Some standard reports are read-only and cannot be copied or changed. Others can be changed and copied. If you need reports that are specific for your organization, you can create custom reports. These reports can be copied and changed. See Work with standard and custom reports for more information.
Note: When saving the report, do not use any of the following special characters Special characters are characters that are neither alphabetic nor numeric. These characters may not be allowed in text because they have programmatic uses. Other terms for special characters include reserved characters, restricted characters, forbidden characters, excluded characters, included characters. in the report name: &_*%?:;=()/[]\|#<>@$
Publish a report design
When you create a report, it is unpublished. Only administrators can access unpublished reports. Before managers can access the report, you must publish it. When you publish a report, you add a number of display options that are used when users run reports. After you publish the report, you must add it to a Report Data Access Profile and assign it in a manager's People Information record.
For more information, see Published Reports.
Manage report access
After you publish the report, you must add it to a Report Data Access Profile and assign it in a manager's People Information record. For more information, see Manage report access.