A.6 Creating Custom Reports

To provide Users with access to service management data that is meaningful to their organization, the reporting capability of the system has been extended through the integration with Pentaho Design Wizard. Pentaho allows Users to create customized reports relevant to their organizational requirements that are published in the Reports tab.

NOTE:The custom reports should be generated using Pentaho Report Designer 3.0.0.

A.6.1 Creating a Custom Report - Example

To create a report using Pentaho Report Design Wizard:

  1. Start Pentaho Report Design Wizard

  2. Enter a Title and Description for the report

  3. Select a Template

    For this example, LiveTime.xreportarc is selected. This template is available from system support and can be supplied on request.

  4. Click Next

  5. Enter Database Connection information

    Select the Connection Type: JNDI.

  6. Click Add

    The Add JNDI Connection page appears.

    NOTE:It is important to note that the appropriate JDBC driver must to be added in order to connect to the database. To add the driver go to

    <Design_Wizard_Home>\lib\jdbc.

  7. Enter database connection details, click Test to confirm the connection

  8. Click OK

  9. Select the Query Designer button to open the Query Designer window (ensure that the database is selected first)

    Alternatively, enter a query in the text area provided.

    NOTE:For a description of the system schema please contact Micro Focus Customer Center for a current Entity-Relationship Diagram.

  10. Create a query as desired

  11. Click Done when complete

    The Query String will be displayed.

  12. Click Next

  13. Replace any variables within the template. For example, rename the Report Title, Page Headers and Footers

    Select the Property to Map, then modify the property by selecting the Custom Value or Column options where relevant.

  14. Click Next

  15. Configure the report layout

    Select and position the fields that will appear in the report and arrange them into groups.

  16. Click Next

  17. Set the formatting and group computations

    These include options such as SUM, AVG, MIN and MAX.

  18. Select and update the display name for each field

  19. Click Next

  20. Configure the page layout

    The options include orientation, margins or add a watermark.

  21. Click Next

  22. Add to the report by configuring a chart or grand total

  23. Modify column sizes or fonts

  24. Click Publish.

A.6.2 Publishing a Report

For a newly created report to be available within the Reports tab of the service management application, it must be published.

To publish a Report:

  1. Open a report within the Pentaho Report Design Wizard

  2. Click the Publish button

    The Publish Report to Server screen is displayed.

  3. Select Publish To: Location

  4. Enter a Name for the published report

  5. Update the Publish Location to Desktop or on your local disk

  6. Click OK.

    IMPORTANT:

    • Along with the published Pentaho files (.xml and .xaction), ZENworks Service Desk expects a .properties file.

      Using Notepad create a .properties file.

      In the .properties file, specify a title and a description as shown below:

      title=<Report Title>
description=<Report description>

    • The .properties file should be named the same as the .xml and .xaction files.

      For example:

      basic-report.xml

      basic-report.xaction

      basic-report.properties

  7. Locate the files and zip them into a single archive.

A.6.3 Customize

The Customized tab displays a list of sample customized reports that have been created within Pentaho and made available for publication within the Supervisor>Reports>Customize tab. These default customized reports can be deleted, if required. Alternatively, more reports can be imported for publication within the support system using the Customize tab.

A.6.4 Importing Reports

Using the ZIP files exported from Pentaho, to import the customized reports:

  1. Select Setup>Reports

  2. Click

  3. Select Choose File to search and select the Zip file to be imported

  4. Click

  5. Click .

A.6.5 Viewing the Imported Reports

After successfully importing the Pentaho reports, perform the following to view the reports:

  1. Click Reports, and then Custom.

  2. Select the report title that was specified in the.properties file, and then click Create.

A.6.6 Sample Reports

A number of sample reports are included with the system, which can be accessed by the system Administrator in Admin>Setup>Reports>Customize tab.

A.6.7 Deleting Reports

To remove custom reports from the system:

  1. Select Setup>Reports

  2. Check the report in the list to be removed

  3. Click .

NOTE:For more information about configuring Pentaho and customizing parameters, see the articles in the support Knowledge Base.