Viewing Reports in a Browser

To view a report in the browser, first open the report and specify the report parameters, including the parameter set (list of resources to report on). If the report has previously been saved with parameters, these are supplied upon opening the report, but the parameters can be changed if required. Once the report output is shown in the browser, users can view or save the results in an alternative format if required.

Alternatively, users can first choose the output format. If the report has previously been saved with parameters, the report output will automatically be generated in the chosen format using those parameters. Otherwise, users need to specify the report parameters before the report can be generated.

Viewing a Single Report

To view a report:

If you are a standard mode user, go to your home page. If you are an advanced mode user, click the Hamburger icon in the menu bar to show the tools menu. Then select Reporting > Reports and navigate to the required folder.
In the list of reports, locate the report you want to view, then click the report name. The report opens.
If the report has been saved with parameters, the report output will be generated immediately using those parameters. If the report does not have saved parameters, or if you want to use different parameters when you view the report, you can specify them now.
To specify report parameters, if the Report Parameters section is not expanded, click to expand it. Depending on the report, some or all of the following parameter options will be available. Complete them as required, or accept the defaults:
- [Parameter Set]: This drop-down list is labelled with the resource type to be reported on (such as ‘Agent’). Select from the list of available parameter sets or select <New>. If the report requires multiple parameters there will be a field for each parameter set.
  
  The parameter set drop down will list the default parameter sets (such as My organization, My folder) as well as any user-created parameter sets that exist either in the same folder as the report or in the user’s home folder. Only parameter sets for the correct resource type are shown. If you select a user-created parameter set then an Edit button appears – click on this to refine the list of resources. You can also select <New> and click on the Create button which appears to save a new parameter set.
- Header Text: You can type introductory text into this box and it will appear at the top of the report output.
- Time Period From, Time Period To: The start date and time for the report and the end date and time for the report. Only shown for historical reports. You can enter the date and time in one of these ways:
  - Type the value in the text field.
  - Click the date-time field to open a calendar drop-down and select a date and time.
  - Click the relative dates drop-down menu then choose a relative date. For example, Today, Yesterday, This Month. For more details about selecting date ranges, see Setting Dates and Times when Running Reports.
- Filters]: Depending on the report, there may be secondary filters to choose from such as Session Type or Article Type. In each filter, select one or multiple options from the drop-down menu or select the ‘Show All’ option.
- Equipment: The data source/equipment to report on. This is usually applicable to real-time reports rather than historical. Only shown if the resources in the chosen parameter set are present on more than one item of equipment.
- Sort On: The column from the list to use to sort the report results.
- Sort Order: The sort order for the rows for the report. One of Ascending or Descending.
- Show Raw Data: Whether to show durations as raw data or formatted data in the report (for example, a duration of 90 seconds would be shown as 90 as raw data, or as 00:01:30 as formatted data). Only shown if the report contains durations.
- Show Only Exceptions: Whether to only show rows where configured thresholds are exceeded for one or more fields in the row, or to show all rows.
  
  Only select this if your report has thresholds defined. If you select this option for a report without thresholds, the report will show no data at all.
- Sort On: The column from the list to use to sort the report results.
- Sort Order: The sort order for the rows for the report. One of Ascending or Descending.
When you have finished specifying the report parameters, click View Report to generate the report output. Alternatively, click Save to save the parameters and generate the report output at the same time.

Viewing Multiple Reports

Viewing multiple real-time reports may impact system performance.

To view multiple reports:

If you are a standard mode user, go to your home page. If you are an advanced mode user click the Hamburger icon in the menu bar to show the tools menu. Then select Reporting > Reports and navigate to the required folder.
Select the check boxes beside the reports you want to view.
Click Run. Each report will open in a separate window. If necessary, specify the required parameters and click View.

Warning Messages

You may see one or two warning messages in the report header. These indicate that only part of the data could be retrieved.

Report has returned the maximum number of rows and may be truncated

This message indicates that the report output reached the limit for the number of rows that can be returned. There are likely to have been other rows of data that were not returned. The missing data will not be visible in the report output and will not be reflected in the report totals, or any charts built from the report.

You may get a truncated report if you attempt to run a report that is very fine-grained in terms of having many rows but not much data aggregated in each row. For example, the report may break up a long time period into very small units (such as a month sliced by agent and quarter hour) or because the report is sliced into too many dimensions which have inflated the row count.

If your report is truncated, you are recommended to reduce the number of rows by refining the report parameters (such as reducing the timescale or selecting a smaller parameter set). Alternatively, you may try reducing the granularity of the report in Report Builder by removing some secondary slicer dimensions and/or setting the parameter, filter or interval dimensions as hidden groups.

Parameter set is too large and has been truncated

This tends to occur when parameterizing the report using an extremely high-volume dimension such as knowledge base articles, of which some organizations have tens or hundreds of thousands. There is a limit of 3000 resources that can be passed into the report at execution time.

You are unlikely to hit the upper size limit of a parameter set if selecting resources manually, but a default parameter set or folder-based parameter set could inherently include too many resources and therefore exceed the limit.

If you use a parameter set that exceeds the limit, the report will still run but will only include some of the resources from the parameter set. Data associated with the missing resources will not be visible in the report output and will not be reflected in the report totals, or any charts built from the report.

You can try using a more refined parameter set that contains fewer resources if that would still give you the data you are looking for. Alternatively, try to re-build the report with a lower volume parameter dimension (such as Department or Portal) and include your original parameter dimension as an attribute (a secondary slicer). This can allow you to report on the same set of data, but the execution of the report is driven by a more manageable parameter set.

If you edit your existing parameter set to have a fewer resources and re-run the report, you may continue to see the truncated parameter set warning for a few minutes as the parameter set is cached by the application and it takes a few minutes to refresh the cache.