Working with Reports in Knowledge Portal
This set of topics describes how you can use Knowledge Portal to work interactively with Quest InTrust reports.
Knowledge Portal is an add-on for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) that allows you to view and manage InTrust reports shipped in the Knowledge Packs. In particular, Knowledge Portal helps you do the following:
- View reports on data collected by InTrust
- Manage InTrust data sources
- Schedule automatic report generation and subscribe to reports delivered by email or made available in a shared folder
- Launch Report Builder to create custom reports on the predefined InTrust model
- Organize the structure of the folders that reports are stored in, and search through the reports for the ones you need
- Easily apply custom settings to multiple reports and folders
- Simplify report data filtering by using enhanced, user-friendly filter parameters
- Instruct reports to import the necessary data from an InTrust repository when they are being generated
Knowledge Portal can be installed as part of InTrust suite setup; for detailed instructions, refer to Installing the First Server in InTrust Organization.
This set of topics explains how you can:
- Install a Report Pack with InTrust reports
- Work with predefined reports from a Report Pack
- Create your own reports using Report Builder and predefined InTrust model
Installing InTrust Reports
When you run the InTrust setup suite, you are prompted to select features to install, in particular, the Knowledge Packs you need. Being a part of the Knowledge Pack, reports are installed automatically. However, you may need to install a particular Report Pack later on—for that, follow the procedure described in this section.
The Report Packs can be installed on the same computer with the Knowledge Portal, or on the different computer.
You must run Report Pack setup under an account the has the System Administrator role in SSRS.
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Note: Before installing Report Packs, clean the %temp% directory. |
To install a Report Pack
- Launch the Report Pack setup from InTrust autorun, opening the Knowledge Packs tab and selecting the Report Pack you need.
- Specify your name and organization.
- Next, specify the URL of report server, for example, http://my_sql_srv/report_server or https://my_sql_srv/report_server.
- To get data for reports provided in the Report Pack, you need to associate the data sources (Reporting Services entities) with the corresponding InTrust databases (for example, Audit database). This should be done on the Configure Data Sources step. Click Configure to provide the settings required for association.
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Note: If the data source has been already configured, you will see the corresponding notification in the Connection Settings for that data source listed on Configure Data Source step. The Modify button will be disabled. You can skip data source configuration in the setup and use Knowledge Portal to modify that data source later. |
- In the Data Source Configuration dialog, select the data source to configure (for example, InTrust Audit) and click Modify. The Data Source Configuration Wizard is started to help you with initial configuration of the data source.
- On the Specify SQL Server step, enter the name of SQL Server where the Audit database resides, or click Browse to select server from the list of available SQL Servers. Specify authentication method to use for connection.
Connection settings will be applied to this data source and used when getting data for the reports and also when removing the temporary tables from the database. (By default, a special Temporary Tables Clean-up job is configured during the setup to periodically clean up the databases from temporary tables that are created at report generation. For details, refer to the Knowledge Portal User Guide.)
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Note: To schedule this job, you should select SQL Server Authentication, or Windows Authentication. If Integrated Windows Authentication is used, the clean-up job cannot be scheduled. |
- On the Specify Database step, you can either select a database from the list, or enter a name for a new database to create.
- Click Next and wait for connection test to complete. Click OK to finish data source configuration.
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Note: For Temporary Tables Clean-up job schedule to be applied, make sure SQL Server Agent is running. If not, start the agent, and then use data source’s options in the Knowledge Portal to schedule the clean-up. |
- If you have InTrust Reports already installed on the specified report server, you will be prompted for their upgrade scenario. On the Upgrade Options step, select the option you need:
- Override old reports
Select this option if you want old reports to be replaced with the new ones. No backup copies of the old reports will be kept. - Backup old reports
Select this option if you want to install new reports, keeping backup copies of the old reports. These copies will be stored in the same location where the corresponding new reports are kept (for example, in InTrust | InTrust for Servers and Applications), in the folder named after this pattern: Old<number>. Here the <number> is incremented after each Report Pack upgrade.
If you want to create the backup copies only of those reports that were customized, select the corresponding check box.
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Note: You can select the Backup only reports which were customized option only if you run the setup locally on the computer where the earlier version of the Report Pack was installed. |
To install another Report Pack, follow the same steps. On steps 5 to 8, work with the corresponding data source (InTrust Audit) and associate it with the database you need (InTrust Audit database).
Viewing Reports
Select the desired report in the tree in the left pane. Report description and filters are displayed on the right.
Go through the filter tabs to configure filtering parameters you need. Filtering parameter types and their usage are described in the Filtering Reports section of the Knowledge Portal User Guide. When configuring the filters, you can select or clear the Apply filters from this tab check box to activate or deactivate the filters on the tab (by default, this check box is selected). After activating the filters, you can specify the values you need.
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Notes:
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Every report has the default filter values stored in the SQL Server Reporting Services database; use the following commands to work with default filter settings:
- Save filters to defaults
Use this command from the Manage Filters menu to save the specified values as the default ones for all report users. This means that when any user opens this report, the filter values will be the ones you specified. If a user makes no changes to these filters, they will be applied to report at generation time. - Load filters from defaults
Use this command from the Manage Filters menu to apply the default (predefined) filter values.
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Note: The Save filters to defaults and Load filters from defaults commands allow you to keep your user-defined filter values even if you deactivate the filter (by clearing the Apply filters from this tab option). You can deactivate the filter you configured, and save it to default - then, after you use the Load command, the value you specified will be shown as the default one (configuration will not be lost even though the filter remains inactive). |
If you do not want filters to be shown within the generated report, then on the Misc filter tab (or Filters tab), in the Show filters list select No.
Making Changes to Reports
Generally, the Property Manager Wizard can be used to apply specific properties (settings) to the reports (for example, filter settings or subscription settings). However, best practices recommend that you customize the report copies rather than the original reports.
For example, you can click Organize Reports from the Manage Folder menu to copy the reports you need to the desired location, or add your favorite reports to My Reports folder using Add to My Reports command.