Reporting Engine - Build and view reports

This article guides you through the process of building, configuring, viewing, and sending customized reports with Nerdio Manager's Report Builder, which forms part of the Reporting Engine feature.

The Report Builder allows you to configure deeply customizable reports in sections.

• Each section represents a single metric that can be reported against.Sections are grouped under headings that correspond to one of the Reporting Engine's Data Collectors:

• Users: Data about users, including their details, numbers, roles, status, and licenses.

• Groups: Data about Group types and assignments.

• Tenants: Data about your managed customer environments, including domains, storage settings, regions, and subscriptions.

• Secure Score: Data about your customer tenants' Microsoft Secure Score measurements.

• Solution Baselines: Data about your customer tenants' status relative to your configured Solution Baselines.

For each Data Collector, you can select multiple sections to add to the report, and, where applicable, configure the type of chart (table, pie chart, line graph, etc.) you want to display for the reported metric.

A rich text editor allows you to format the report to your style requirements, add custom introductory or explanatory text, and determine the position of placeholders such as report name, description, and date.

Reports can be viewed in your browser or as a downloadable PDF, which you can also choose to email to nominated recipients.

Prerequisites

       Role-based access control (RBAC) and permissions

The following matrix shows the Report Builder configuration permissions associated with built-in Nerdio Manager roles :

       Preparatory steps

Before you can build and view reports, you need to have configured the Data Collectors you want to report against.

We recommend that you've also allowed at least one scheduled run of each Data Collector to complete. It's possible to run the associated Data Collectors when you run a report, but if you run several at once you may experience an impact on performance.

Create, configure, and manage reports

When you first create a report, you'll be offered extensive customization options for each reporting metric. Once you've created a report, you can run it on demand or schedule when it runs.

To create a new report or edit an existing one:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Report Engine > Reports.

2. To create a new report, select New Report. Or, to edit an existing report, locate the report you want to clone, select the More actions menu, and select Edit.

3. In the Report Details screen, specify the following information:

   • Report Name: Enter a title for the report. The variable {$report.name} on the report title page will resolve to this value.

   • Report Description: Enter a short description for the report. The variable {$report.description} on the report title page will resolve to this value.

   • Number of Reports to Store: Enter an integer value to specify how many past versions of the report will be retained in storage.

   • Max Data Age in Days: Enter an integer value to limit the age of the data presented in the report.

     Tip: Use this field if you want to display a smaller and more recent set of data than retained by the applicable Data Collector(s). For example, you might have collected data for the past year but only want to report on the past 30 days. Leave this field blank to include all information gathered by the associated Data Collector(s). The maximum age of the data displayed in the report is then governed by the data retention period you specified for its associated Data Collector.

   • Sent To (optional): Select who will automatically receive a PDF copy of the report by email every time it runs. Choose one or more of the following:

     • Users: Use the dropdown to nominate individual Nerdio Manager users to receive PDF copies.

     • Roles: Use the dropdown to nominate individual Nerdio Manager roles to receive PDF copies. All users with the selected role designation(s) will receive a copy.

     • Custom Email(s): Enter individual email addresses of other individuals to whom you want to send PDF copies.

4. Select Next.

5. In the Configure Report screen, choose sections from the lefthand side of the page to appear in your report by selecting the applicable plus icon.

6. To configure display options for a section, select it on the righthand side of the page and scroll down to the settings dialog. Here you can specify how you want the section data to display, including:

   • Title field: Customize the section heading that will appear in the report.

   • Display As field(available for certain display types only): Choose from options including table, pie chart, and graph.

   • Settings section:

     • For all chart types, select PDF to specify whether the section will appear in portrait or landscape orientation in the PDF output.

     • For tables, select Columns to configure which data columns to display in the output and their sort order.

   • Additional fields: For certain data and display types you can further customize how your data is displayed, including the time period to include in the chart and whether to display numeric values or percentages.

7. Once you've selected and configured all the sections you want to include in your report, select Next.

8. In the Target Accounts field, choose specific customer accounts you want to report against, or All to report against all your managed accounts. Select Next to continue.

9. On the Summary page, review your settings. You can also create a preview PDF against a selected target account to verify that the report is formatted as you expect.

10. Once you're satisfied, select Create. This will save the report layout to be run and viewed at your convenience.

To run or schedule a report:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Report Engine > Reports.

2. Locate the report you want to run, and select its play icon.

3. To run the report immediately, select the Run Now tab.

   • Use the checkboxes to determine whether to wait for any running Data Collectors to finish running before running the report, and/or whether to force all Data Collectors to run and provide fresh data before running the report.

   • Select Run Now to run the report immediately or when the specified Data Collectors (if any) have finished their runs.

4. To schedule report runs, select the Schedules tab.

   • Either select a previously configured global schedule from the Schedule dropdown, or select Create new schedule to configure a new schedule specifically for this task.

   • Use the checkboxes to determine whether to wait for any running Data Collectors to finish running before initiating the scheduled report run, and/or whether to force all Data Collectors to run and provide fresh data before running the report.

   • Select Save & Close to save your changes and set the reporting schedule.

To view a previously run report:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Report Engine > Reports.

2. Locate the report you want to run, and select its view icon.

3. Use the Report Date to View dropdown to select available reports.

   Note: The number of reports available in this menu is governed by the Number of Reports to Store setting specified when creating the report.

4. Use the Account to View dropdown to select the customer account for which you want to view report data.

   Tip: For data displayed in a tabular format, you can change the page size and use the search boxes to help find specific information.

To clone an existing report:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Report Engine > Reports.

2. Locate the report you want to clone, and select the More actions menu.

3. Select Clone.

4. Enter a name for the cloned report.

5. To copy the schedules associated with the original report to the cloned report, check the Copy Schedules box. If you want the cloned report to run on a different schedule to the original, leave the box unchecked.

6. Select Clone.

   A copy of the report is created and can now be run or edited from the Reports page.

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