Creating and managing reports from the AR System Report Console

Use the AR System Report Console to perform different operations on reports such as create, schedule, edit, or delete data. In the the AR System Report Console report list, select and run reports, and create and modify reports in the report designer screen.

Use the AR System reports to generate statistical values based on the data. AR System reports can be run on the Web.

Use the AR System reports to export data in .xml, .arx, or .csv format for use in another application or on another AR System server.

The following table describes the icons in the upper-right corner of the Report Console:

To create a new AR System report

1. In a browser, click the AR System Report Console link on the home page to open the Report Console.
2. Click New .
   
   
3. In the Type field of the New Report window, select the AR System report type.
   For information about creating Web report, see Creating-and-managing-custom-web-reports.
4. In the Form field, enter the name of the form to use for the report. This field is required.
   • (Optional) To limit the list of forms to those that are already used in other reports, select the Forms Used in Existing Reports check box. This can speed up retrieval of the list of forms, but any form that is not already used in some report does appear on the list.
   • To find the form quickly, type the first few letters of the form name. For example, type Sample to select from the list of forms related to the Sample application.
5. Select or clear the Add default fields and sort order check box:
   • Selected—Fields that appear in the form's search results list are automatically added to the report definition, along with the default sort order. You can remove or change these fields and sort order later if necessary.
   • Cleared—No fields are added to the report definition automatically.

6. In the Name field, type a name for the report. This field is required.
   The report name must be unique. The maximum length is 128 characters.
   Each report must have a unique Name/Locale combination. For example, you can have multiple reports with the name Monday, if the locale for each report is different.
   

   Important

   You cannot change the name of the report after you exit this screen, so make sure that you have followed all the specifications for the report name.

7. Click OK.

To modify a report

As a user, you can modify or delete only those reports that you created. You cannot edit or delete reports created by others, but you can open them to view the built-in query and fields used in the reports.
You can create a copy of a report by using the Save As button to save the report with a new name. In that case, you are the creator of the new report and can edit it.

Administrators can modify or delete any report.

Out-of-the-box web reports provided with BMC Helix ITSM cannot be modified, even if the user is an application administrator, because the reports are not created from the AR System Report Console. However, an application administrator can delete these out-of-the-box web reports.

1. In the Report Console, select the report that you want to modify.
2. Click the Edit Report icon  that appears to the left of the report name in the console.
3. Make any necessary modifications to the report as described in Creating-and-managing-custom-web-reports.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Back to return to AR System Report Console list.

To delete a report

1. In the Report Console, select the report that you want to modify.
2. Click Delete .

To run reports from AR System Report Console

You can run AR System reports from the AR System Report Console. The available output formats and how you select them vary with the report type. To run a report, you must have permissions to the form and to the fields included in the report. If you do not have permission to the form, the report does not appear in the list of available reports. If you have permission to the form but do not have permission to a field included in the report, that column is blank when you run the report.

In cases where you have a large number of records and want to narrow down the search results, you can add another qualification to the report query at runtime, or override the built-in query with a new qualification. Perform the following steps to run reports from the Report Console:

1. Log in to Mid Tier and open the Report Console.
2. Locate the report you want to run in the Report Console list.
3. (Optional) To narrow the report results by adding a query, click Show Additional Filter. For more information, see Updating-a-query-or-qualification-at-runtime.
   If the report includes a primary and secondary form, the filter shows only fields that are included in the primary form.

1. (Optional) To override a built-in report query, click Override. See Updating-a-query-or-qualification-at-runtime.
2. For AR System reports only, select the output format before running the report. See Exporting-a-custom-AR-System-report.
   Web reports run in HTML, and you select the output format after running the report. See Exporting-a-custom-web-report.
3. Use one of these methods to run the report:
   
   • Select the report and click Run ( ). In this case, the report appears in a viewing area below the list of reports.
   • Double-click the report entry in the list. In this case, the report appears in a separate window. This can be helpful if you need to compare two or more reports at a time.
4. If the Parameter dialog box appears, enter the information to narrow the report results, and then click OK.

The configuration parameter arsystem.nativereport.onscreen_max_entries controls the number of entries that are to be displayed on the browser. This is applicable only for native reports with destination as Screen. The browser cannot scale to show a large amount of records. The system administrator must configure it to an appropriate value. The default is set to 2000.

The arsystem.nativereport.onscreen_max_entries configuration property does not place a limit on data exports such as CSV and ARX.

Finding reports

When you open the Report Console from the home page, all reports to which you have permission appear in the list. You can narrow the list to view only those reports you have created, or only reports belonging to a certain category, such as Incident Management. 

When you click Report after running a search, the Report Console lists only those reports that are based on the form you searched. In this case, when you run the report, only the data you selected from the search results is included, and you cannot add to or override the report query.

Use any of the following methods to locate reports in the Report Console list:

• In the Show field, select Created by Me to see only those reports that you created..
• If report categories are defined, select a category from the Category field menu to see only the reports assigned to that category.
• Sort the list by clicking any of the column headings. For example, click the Form Name column heading to sort the list by the associated forms.
• Use the expand and collapse buttons located below the list to see a longer or shorter view of the list, or to hide the list.