The report builder

The report builder answers questions the dashboards do not: which customers had the most SLA breaches last quarter, which devices run an unsupported operating system, how much licence waste each customer carries. You pick the data, set a period and filters, choose how to group it, and the table and chart update as you go.

Opening the builder#

Go to Reports > Report builder. The page lists:

• Saved reports: yours, and those colleagues shared that you are allowed to run, with their data, owner and when they last ran. Filter by Data or Owner, save views and choose columns as on any list. They are also listed under Saved reports in the Reports sidebar.
• Start from a template: ready-made reports grouped by category, with Find a template to search them. A padlock on a template means it needs a permission you do not have.

Press / to search and n to start a new report.

Templates#

Templates cover the questions MSPs ask most often. They include:

Further templates cover failed backups, backup success, detections by severity, Cyber Essentials readiness, monitoring alerts, quotes and win rate, server uptime and uptime by customer, check failures, failed automation runs, remote sessions by technician, visits planned against actual time, articles due for review, customers missing each record template, credentials never changed, credential reveals by person, AI cost by feature, person and customer, sales by customer, payments received, tax by rate and aged debtors. A template only appears when its module is switched on.

Building a report#

1. Click a template, or New report to start from scratch.
2. Under Report on, choose the data (the dataset). The line under it says what each row is.
3. Set the Period. The label above it says what the period applies to, for example Period (opened) for tickets or Period (due) for SLA breaches.
4. Pick a Customer, or leave All customers.
5. Set any Filters.
6. Choose Group by, or leave Nothing: every row. For a pivot, choose a second grouping in Then by.
7. For a grouped report, choose how many Groups to show and whether to Compare with an earlier period.
8. Tick the Columns you want, or for a grouped report, what to Show for each group.
9. For a grouped report, pick a Chart.

The report runs as you change it. Tables are sorted and paged by the server, 100 rows a page, with a total row for columns that add up. Customers, devices, tickets, users, quotes and contracts in the table link straight to them.

Periods#

Choose This month, Last month, Last 30 days, This quarter, Last quarter or This year, or enter From and To dates and press Apply. Presets are worked out each time the report runs, so a saved "last month" report always shows the month just gone.

Some datasets describe things as they are now (devices, licences, Microsoft 365 users, software). For those the period does not apply.

Filters#

Filters depend on the dataset. They come in a few kinds:

• A choice from a list, such as Assignee, Queue or Priority.
• Any, Yes or No, such as Still open or Billable.
• Text that a field contains, such as Subject contains.
• At least or at most a number, such as Late by at least (minutes).

Grouping and charts#

Group by collapses the rows into one per value, for example one row per customer. Date columns can be grouped by day, week, month, quarter or year. Then tick what to show for each group, such as Total time or Number of entries.

Grouped reports can be drawn as a Bar, Stacked or Line chart, or left as a Table.

A second grouping#

Then by turns a grouped report into a pivot: the first grouping down the side, the second across the top, with one measure in each cell (Show in each cell) and a total for every row and column. For example, billable time by customer then by month, or tickets by queue then by priority. Dates run in date order across the top; anything else runs biggest first, up to 24 columns with the rest under Other. The chart becomes a stacked bar of the same figures.

Top groups#

Groups to show keeps the first 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 50 groups in the report's order (biggest first unless you sort it otherwise) and puts every other row under Other, so the totals still add up. It is for things such as customers, queues and people; a date grouping keeps every day, week or month.

Comparing with an earlier period#

Compare with sets the report beside an earlier period:

• Previous period: the period of the same length just before, such as last month beside this month.
• Last year: the same dates a year earlier.

A grouped report gains, for each measure, the earlier value, the change and the change in %. For a percentage measure the change is in points. Bar and line charts draw the earlier period as a dashed, lighter series beside each measure. Dates are matched by their place in the period (the first week with the earlier period's first week); other groups by what they are. An ungrouped report compares its row count and totals.

Comparing needs a period, so it is not offered for data described as it is now, and it is not offered with a second grouping.

The data you can report on#

Permissions are checked every time a report runs. Money columns, such as a time entry's cost or a quote's margin, only show to people with Finance view.

Exporting#

Click Export and choose:

• CSV (every row): all rows up to 50,000, with units in the column headers.
• Excel (every row): all rows up to 50,000 in an Excel workbook, with a bold, frozen header row and real numbers, dates, percentages and money (time as hours), a Total row when the report has one, and a second sheet, About this report, with the data, period, customer, filters, groupings, comparison and when it was prepared.
• PDF: the title, what the report covers, its filters, the chart and the table with its total. Wide reports turn to landscape.

To keep the report, have it emailed on a schedule or put it on a dashboard, see Saved and scheduled reports and Dashboards and your Home layout.