ZENworks Reporting includes the following core components:
Jaspersoft Reporting Engine: ZENworks Reporting uses Jaspersoft, a web-based application, as the underlying reporting engine.
Domain: The Jaspersoft Reporting Engine uses domains to display objects or items that are used for reporting. A domain is a collection of objects mapped to a database schema. Domains are available for various ZENworks products such as ZENworks Configuration Management, Audit Management, and ZENworks Mobile Management. These domains are not shipped with ZENworks Reporting, but are provided with the individual ZENworks products. ZENworks ships with two sets of domains, ZENworks Configuration Management and ZENworks Audit. During the ZENworks Reporting installation, based on the information specified, one or more of these domains will be imported into ZENworks Reporting. A domain is packaged as a part of a zipped resource file.
LDAP Access: ZENworks Reporting currently supports only LDAP- based authentication. Thus, users must log in to ZENworks Reporting by using their LDAP credentials. ZENworks Reporting supports both Microsoft Active Directory and NetIQ e-Directory. As part of the installation process, the customer specifies LDAP groups with users who should have administrator privileges in ZENworks Reporting. During installation, these groups are mapped as Administrator Roles in ZENworks Reporting. Subsequently, a user belonging to these groups can log in to ZENworks Reporting as an administrator.
ZENworks Reporting presents a view of ZENworks data according to the user requirements. You can view the data by using the following:
Ad Hoc View: These views are primarily data analysis tools provided by ZENworks Reporting. These views can be created by dragging and dropping various domain objects into the Ad Hoc Editor. Users can also select certain objects to be filters. Using these filters, a user can perform drill-downs on data to get further insight. In these views, a user still has access to all the data objects exposed by the domain, and can swap objects. You can also achieve significant results by using the Ad Hoc View to generate reports using a combination of objects. After you get the required results, you can save this view for later use, or you can publish it as an Ad Hoc report. An Ad Hoc view can be a Tabular View, Chart View, or Crosstab View.
Ad Hoc Reports: These are custom reports that can be created either by saving an Ad Hoc view as a report, or by writing an SQL query and embedding it in a report.
Predefined Reports: These reports are created by Novell. They are well formatted and have been built by using the Jaspersoft Studio Profession tool. These reports are specific to a domain and are available in a zipped resource file, which is imported into ZENworks Reporting during installation.
Dashboards: Dashboard is a collection of reports provided with relevant information. A dashboard can use the Predefined reports shipped with ZENworks Reporting, or it can use Ad hoc reports.