Reports-Dataviews comparison
Although there are many similarities between reports and dataviews, reporting has been built to enhance dataviews with an additional capability of highly formatted layouts, report scheduling, and notification/distribution capabilities. The following table compares functionality:
Functionality |
Dataviews |
Reporting |
Description |
---|---|---|---|
Actionable |
Yes |
Dataviews are embedded applications that allow users to select one or more employees and perform an action on them, such as adding a punch, approving their timecard, or accessing their people record or timecard. |
|
Simple calculations |
Yes |
Yes |
Both Dataviews and interactive reports allow users to apply a column-level count, sum, average, minimum or maximum calculation on any column, as applicable to each column's data type. If the Dataview or report is grouped, each group of data will also display a summarized calculation for each subset. |
Weighted KPI calculations |
Yes |
Yes |
Dataviews allow complex calculations such as a weighted average. These values appear as column-level summarizations and also render at each sub-group should the dataview be grouped by any column. |
Show/hide columns, re-sequencing |
Yes |
Yes |
Both Dataviews and interactive reports enable all users to show or hide columns, as well as re-sequence columns |
Scheduling |
Yes |
Reports can be scheduled to run on behalf of any user and be sent to a collection of users. The schedule can be one-time or recurring hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. |
|
Print/export |
Yes |
Yes |
Both Dataviews and reports can be exported and printed. Here are the supported outputs:
|
Print formatting |
Yes |
Reports allow the report designer to configure page settings such as margins, page orientation, and expected paper size. |
|
Personalize: sort, filtering, grouping |
Yes |
Yes |
Both Dataviews and reports allow end-users to personalize their view. Users are able to sort by any column, group data, and apply a filter, such as limiting the data set to include only employees who are full-time.
|
Data formatting |
No |
Yes |
Reports allow users to change how data is displayed in a report. For example, if a date is presented in long date/time format (January 17, 2017 12:32p), the user is able to change the formatting to a short date format (1/17/2017). |
Crosstabs |
Yes |
Reports support the ability to summarize data by conjoining data for each cross-section of the selected attributes or variables, and can provide a row- and column-level summarization according to the selected calculation. Dataviews provide a basic level of summarization using the grouping capability. |
|
Conditional formatting |
No |
Yes |
Reports allow users to apply conditional formatting such as turning text or a field cell green if a number is above, say 15% and red if the number equals or is less than 15%. |
Computed columns |
Yes/No |
Yes |
Reports allow users to take two columns and combine them into a third column, such as concatenating two string values or summing two numeric values. Dataviews support computed numeric columns through the KPI framework – this is simply a new metric or KPI. String concatenation is not supported. |
Charting |
Yes |
Yes |
Both Dataviews and reports support various types of charts. |