Managed Reporting Concepts

Managed Reporting Administrators create and manage user environments. Managed Reporting developers can develop content for users. Managed Reporting users can run Standard Reports, defined in advance by a Managed Reporting administrator or a developer. In addition, Managed Reporting users can create and save reports that meet their individual business needs without knowing the details and complexities of the underlying data source or the FOCUS reporting language.

To organize the Standard Reports and Reporting Objects available to users, Managed Reporting Administrators create a series of domains using the Managed Reporting Domain Builder in the browser or the Explorer in the full Developer Studio. Organizing Standard Reports and Reporting Objects by domains ensures that users can access the information they require, while restricting access to sensitive or confidential data.

Managed Reporting Capabilities

As a Managed Reporting administrator or developer, you create the Standard Reports that users run, as well as publish the HTML launch pages used to call reports that require parameters. In addition, you can perform the following actions:

Create access rights to Managed Reporting. To enable a user to access Managed Reporting, you must create a user account for every user, assign the user a role, and specify the groups to which every user is a member. You also specify which reporting domains belong to each group. User accounts and groups are created with the Managed Reporting Administration interface.
For more information about the Managed Reporting Administration interface, see Creating Domains, Groups, Roles, and Users. The Managed Reporting Administration interface is not available in Managed Reporting Developer for Windows.
Create and access the metadata for data sources. To create a report that accesses a data source, you must first create and access the metadata for that data source. Metadata is information about the structure of the data, which may include the fields in the data source, the format of the data, and the location of the data sources.
You create and manage metadata from the Data Servers feature in Domain Builder using the browser, or using the Explorer in Developer Studio. You can enhance metadata with additional descriptive information, for example, the business context of a particular field.
Build the reports that retrieve and format data. Using Managed Reporting, you can build, test, and deploy sophisticated tabular reports and graphs, without knowing the FOCUS reporting language. In addition to creating new report procedures, you can move existing procedures from the WebFOCUS Reporting Server to the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Repository where you can modify or enhance the procedures. For information about creating tabular reports and graphs, see the Creating Reports With Report Assistant and Creating Charts With Graph Tools manuals.
For information about using report procedures stored on the WebFOCUS Reporting Server, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Developer's Manual.
Create Reporting Objects for users. Managed Reporting enables you to create Reporting Objects for Managed Reporting and Dashboard users. Reporting Objects are representations of data sources, which present the available data using terms and formats that are meaningful to users. Using predefined Reporting Objects, Managed Reporting users build and save their own reports without having to know the details and complexities of the underlying reporting language and data sources.
For more information about creating Reporting Objects, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Developer's Manual.
Create OLAP-enabled reports. Using Managed Reporting, you can update metadata files to make them OLAP-enabled, and you can create OLAP-enabled Standard Reports and Reporting Objects for your users. Users can run OLAP-enabled reports and use the OLAP selections panel or the OLAP Control Panel to manipulate the reports to view different representations of the data, without modifying the actual Standard Report or Reporting Object. For more information, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting End User's Manual.
Publish HTML launch pages for the reports. After you create and test your reports, you can use Managed Reporting to publish the report to the Web. When you publish a report, you create a launch page, which is a complete HTML file that calls the report procedure. You can create an HTML launch page from any report that is stored in Managed Reporting. These launch pages can be published back to Managed Reporting or incorporated into a self-service application.
You can customize launch pages by editing the HTML file to add additional HTML tags and syntax. For example, the HTML launch page can include image files (GIF or JPG files), tables, frames, JavaScript™ functions, and hypertext links to other Web pages. In addition, the launch pages that you create can be accessed through HTML hyperlinks from other Web pages.

For more information about publishing launch pages, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Developer's Manual.
Schedule reports. Managed Reporting provides access to ReportCaster, where you can schedule and distribute Standard Reports. ReportCaster enables you to provide essential, updated information directly to the people who need it, on time, automatically. For information about scheduling and distributing report output with Managed Reporting, see the ReportCaster Administration manual.
Distribute reports when certain test conditions are met using ReportCaster Alerts. A ReportCaster Alert sends notification to a user whenever a specified event takes place. You are able to create test conditions (rules) and specify how often you would like these rules or events to be checked against a data source. ReportCaster can then generate a report or sections of that report (burst option) as a result of the alert.
ReportCaster Alerts work with all e-mail clients and WAP-enabled mobile phones. Alerts can also be sent to any PC or laptop computer with e-mail capability.

For more information about ReportCaster Alerts administration, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Developer's Manual.
Receive a WebFOCUS report by Two-Way Email. As a Managed Reporting administrator or developer, you can use Managed Reporting to create and maintain Two-Way Email templates, which enable users to request reports. A Managed Reporting Administrator can also use the Two-Way Email Administrator Console to manage subscriber information, monitor the execution of report requests, cancel requests, and perform other administrative tasks.
For more information about Two-Way Email administration, see Two-Way Email Administration in the Using Two-Way Email manual.
Customize Managed Reporting. Managed Reporting enables you to customize the user environment by adding profiles and customized help files to domains. A profile, which runs each time a user opens a Managed Reporting domain, can provide introductory information about the domain. Customized help files, which users access from a Managed Reporting domain, provide additional information specific to the domain, including detailed explanations of Standard Reports and Reporting Objects.
For more information, see Creating Domains.