Working with reports

reports are generated from data that is derived from the  database.

Data is collected, in part, using several 

jobs. To ensure that the data is available to transfer from the  database to the reports data warehouse, you must import any job-related templates and scripts and then set up the  jobs that gather data for the reports you want to use.  uses ETL to transfer data from the  database to the reports data warehouse. You can run ETL from the command line or as a    Script Job.  provides several scripts to execute the ETL process. The product also includes Metadata Navigator, a GUI tool, to view the ETL status.

•  Data collection and reports
• Considerations for built-in reports
• Including properties in ad hoc reports

 BMC BladeLogic Decision Support for Server Automation provides the following types of reports:

• Built-in reports: The reports that are delivered with 

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  . These reports are read-only (unless you have purchased and enabled Report Studio and your role has access to it). In addition to viewing these reports, you can create report views, and export the reports results to a file. If you have 

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  , you can export built-in report definitions, edit them, and make other changes.
  For information about tasks that you can perform with built-in reports, see Managing-reports-using-IBM-Cognos.

• Ad hoc reports (also called custom reports): These reports are model-based reports in which the data, presentation type (chart or table), filter criteria, data items to display, and data grouping and sorting are all customizable.

 Data collection and reports

Some reports are based on jobs that run in 

, while some reports use data collected in other ways. You can create a BMC Server Automation Network Shell Script Job to run ETL to transfer data from the BMC Server Automation database to the reports data warehouse.

The following topics explain reports for each domain, how information is gathered for these reports, how to set up 

jobs when applicable. Each report table in the following topics lists the report names, description, and the prompts for running the report.

• Audit-reports
• Command-usage reports
• Inventory-and-Change-Tracking-reports
• Job-Activity-reports
• Patch-reports
• Provisioning-reports
• RBAC-reports
• Server-Activity-report
• BSA-Utilization-Dashboard
• KPI Dashboard reports

Considerations for built-in reports

The following conditions apply to the built-in reports:

• When specifying options for scheduling reports, if you select Override the default values, the following values appear as choices in the Date Range field, but are not supported: Absolute Dates, Last Days, Last Months, and Last Years. If you select one of these date ranges, the report does not run. To avoid this issue, select other Date Range values or do not select Override the default values.
• If the HTML output of a report consists of multiple pages, a question mark character (?) is displayed instead of the current page number when you navigate to the last page of the report by using the Bottom link and then use the Page up link to view previous pages.
• BMC recommends that you not modify built-in reports. Modification can result in corrupted reports. If you want to use modified versions of the built-in reports, such as adding more report filters or saving the reports with a different name. BMC does not guarantee that modified versions of built-in reports will work in future releases.
• Do not change the built-in report names in any language (reports are named in several languages). This is not supported and can result in corrupted reports.
• In some cases, the reports that you see at your site and the data that appears in reports is determined by the versions of 

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  and 

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  that are installed on your system.

Including properties in ad hoc reports

You specify that object properties be transferred from the 

database to the reports data warehouse by using the Used in reports flag in the  property dictionary.

Each property definition in the dictionary includes the Used in reports flag. The ETL process uses this setting to determine which properties to transfer to the reports data warehouse.

By default, all built-in properties have the Used in reports flag set. When you add a property to the dictionary, the Used in reports flag is off by default. You can turn on the flag to include the new property in reports. The next time the ETL process synchronizes the
model, it is updated to include any new properties with the flag turned on.

If you want to remove a property from reports, you can turn the flag off.

For information about the property dictionary, see Managing properties using the Property Dictionary.

Related topics

Refer to the following information sources for more information:

For information about	See
Importing templates	Importing-and-exporting-report-definition-content-and-package
Report data sources and related BMC Server Automation jobs	Data collection and reports
Creating BMC Server Automation jobs	Creating and modifying BMC Server Automation jobs
Loading properties from the BMC Server Automation database to the reports data warehouse	Including properties in ad hoc reports
Transferring RBAC data	RBAC-data-updates
Running ETL	Running-ETL