1. Cloud Control Administrator's Guide
  2. Generating Reports
  3. Using Information Publisher
  4. Custom Reports

Custom Reports

Although the predefined report definitions that come with Information Publisher cover the most common reporting needs, you may want to create specialized reports. If a predefined report comes close to meeting your information requirements, but not quite, you can use Information Publisher's Create Like function to create a new report definition based on one of the existing reports definitions.

Creating Custom Reports

To create custom reports:

  1. Choose whether to modify an existing report definition or start from scratch. If an existing report definition closely matches your needs, it is easy to customize it by using the Create Like function.
  2. Specify name, category, and sub-category. Cloud Control provides default categories and sub-categories that are used for out-of-box reports. However, you can categorize custom reports in any way you like.
  3. Specify any time-period and/or target parameters. The report viewer will be prompted for these parameters while viewing the report.
  4. Add reporting elements. Reporting elements are pre-defined content building blocks, that allow you to add a variety of information to your report. Some examples of reporting elements are charts, tables, and images.
  5. Customize the report layout. Once you have assembled the reporting elements, you can customize the layout of the report.

Report Parameters

By declaring report parameters, you allow the user to control what data is shown in the report. There are two types of parameters: target and time-period.

Example: If you are defining a report that will be used to diagnose a problem (such as a memory consumption report), the viewer will be able to see information for their target of interest.

By specifying the time-period parameter, the viewer will be able to analyze historical data for their period of interest.

Analyzing Historical Data

Information Publisher allows you to view reports for a variety of time-periods:

  • Last 24 Hours/ 7 Days/ 31 Days

  • Previous X Days/ Weeks/ Months/ Years (calendar units)

  • This Week/ This Month/ This Year (this week so far)

  • Any custom date range.

Report Elements

Report elements are the building blocks of a report definition. In general, report elements take parameters to generate viewable information. For example, the Chart from SQL element takes a SQL query to extract data from the Management Repository and a parameter specifying whether to display the data in the form of a pie, bar, or line chart. Report elements let you "assemble" a custom report definition using the Information Publisher user interface.

Information Publisher provides a variety of reporting elements. Generic reporting elements allow you to display any desired information, in the form of charts, tables or images. For example, you can include your corporate Logo, with a link to your corporate Web site. Monitoring elements show monitoring information, such as availability and alerts for managed targets. Service Level Reporting elements show availability, performance, usage and achieved service levels, allowing you to track compliance with Service Level Agreements, as well as share information about achieved service levels with your customers and business executives.