Understanding PS/nVision Reporting on the Web

Users with Internet access can run, view, drill down into, and distribute PS/nVision reports through a browser, without needing a PeopleSoft application installed on client machines. Users can send reports as email attachments rather than requiring recipients to navigate to a location on a file server.

PS/nVision on the web includes:

  • Internet versions of report requests, report books, and scope definitions.

  • Output in Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) format.

  • DrillDown for Microsoft Excel reports.

  • Email options to send PS/nVision reports to individual users or users in specified roles.

  • Integration with PeopleSoft Process Scheduler and PeopleSoft Report Manager to send bursting report instances to designated users or users in specified roles.

  • Support for multiple PS/nVision sessions when PS/nVision is invoked from PeopleSoft Process Scheduler.

  • A restart feature that allows the system to restart a process if it is marked No Success.

Note: Microsoft is no longer offering mainstream support for Excel 2003. As a result, beginning with PeopleTools 8.51, PeopleSoft is no longer supporting Excel 2003 usage with PS/nVision.

PS/nVision will no longer support the HTML output format because Microsoft Excel 2007 removes certain features when an Excel file is saved in an HTML format. For example, Defined Names and other features are removed when the Excel file is saved in an HTML format. Without the Defined Names feature, you cannot use PS/nVision drilldown. As there will be loss of nVision-specific information in HTML reports, the support for the HTML output format is no longer available beginning with PeopleTools 8.51. Please note that the Microsoft Excel Format is still supported as an output format for nVision reports. The generated reports will be in the Excel 2007 (.xlsx) format beginning with PeopleTools 8.51. All nVision features, including drilldown, are supported with this output format. These features continue to function the same way they did with the Excel 2003 (.xls) output format.

PS/nVision uses Microsoft Office OpenXML SDK (Software Development Kit) to generate Excel-compatible PS/nVision reports on the batch server without using Excel in an unattended mode. Design and usage of PS/nVision windows client are not impacted by the OpenXML SDK, and PS/nVision windows client continue to use Microsoft Excel and Excel API.

See PeopleTools Installation Guide: Installing Products for PS/nVision.