Change Auditor 7.5 - User Guide

Generate and Schedule Reports

Generate and Schedule Reports

•	Schedule reports for distribution

•	Launch Report Designer

•	Publish reports

•	Print or save a page’s contents

Presenting audited information in a professional, concise, and effective way is as critical as gathering the data. You can schedule reports to be sent through email (using the same SMTP configuration defined for alerts), published to Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) or send to a shared folder.

Change Auditor’s reporting allows you to specify who can see the report and define which data to include. For example, administrators could define reports that highlight how many times a particular event or category of events occurred in the last 30 days or provide a more detailed accounting to include who made the changes, how many times, and the before and after values associated with those changes.

 

Schedule reports for distribution

Schedule reports for distribution

To enable, design, and schedule reports for distribution use the following components:

•	Report Layouts page (Administration Tasks tab) to create global templates that define the header and footer information for reports. See Create global report template.

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Layout tab (Search Properties tabs) to specify the data (columns) to be retrieved from the database and displayed for the selected search. In addition, you can specify the column order, sort criteria and order, and data grouping to be used for displaying the retrieved data. The settings on this tab are also used to display the search results in the client. See Define report content and layout.

•	Report tab (Search Properties tabs) to enable reporting for a selected search query, specify the global template to be used or choose to design a custom report using the report designer, and schedule the distribution of the report. See Enable and schedule reporting.

Create global report template

Create global report template

The report templates defined on the Report Layouts page on the Administration Tasks tab define the header and footer information to include the search results report. You can use the default report template or create a custom report template using the Report Layout page.

NOTE: Use the report templates on the Administration Tasks tab to define the header and footer information for a search results report. To design a custom report layout for an individual search, including content and data layout, click Design Report on the Report tab (Search Properties tab) to start the Report Designer.

Report Layouts page (Administration Tasks tab)

The Report Layouts page is displayed when Report Layouts is selected from the Configuration task list in the navigation pane of the Administration Tasks tab. From this page you can add, edit, or delete global report templates.

The Report Layouts page contains all the report templates that have been previously defined. Initially, this list contains the Default template, which is used for all search results reports unless changed on the Report tab of a search’s Search Properties tabs.

To add a global report template:

1	Open the Administration Tasks tab and click Configuration.

2	Select Report Layouts in the Configuration task list to open the Report Layouts page.

3	Click Add to display the New Report Layout dialog. Enter a descriptive name for the new report template and click OK.

The report designer is displayed.

4	Use the controls in the toolbar to the left of the report grid to define the header and footer information to include. For example:

▪	To add a page header, click the Page Header button. Click the report grid and the header pane is added to the top of the page. Use the arrow controls or Height setting in the Properties pane to resize the header pane.

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To add the report title to the page header pane, click the Text button. Move the pencil cursor in the heading pane where you want to place the report title and click. Open the System Variable tab in the Text Editor, locate the ReportName variable. Double-click the variable to add it to the text pane. Click OK to save your selection and close the Text Editor.

▪	Back on the report grid, you can resize the {ReportName} text box to prevent the report titles from being truncated. You can also use the settings in the Properties pane to modify the font, size, color, and so forth.

▪	To add a page footer (for example, page number), click the Page Footer button. Click the report grid and the page footer pane is added to the bottom of the page. Use the arrow controls or Height setting in the Properties pane to resize the footer pane.

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To add the page number to the page footer pane, click the Text button. Move the pencil cursor in the footer pane where you want to place the page number and click. Open the System Variables tab in the Text Editor, locate the page number variable to use (for example, PageNofM). Double-click the variable to add it to the text pane. Click OK to save your selection and close the Text Editor.

NOTE: This is an example of how to use the report designer to add a simple header and footer. However, there are many more capabilities with the report designer which uses StimulReport.Net components. For a detailed description and functionality of each component available for designing reports, click F1 to view the Stimulsoft online help (www.stimulsoft.com).

5	The new report template is added to the Report Layouts page (Administration Tasks tab) and is available in the Layout drop-down menu on the Report tab (Search Properties tabs).

Define report content and layout

Define report content and layout

For each search, built-in or custom, the data displayed in both the client and in the associated report (when reporting is enabled) is predefined. However, you can use the Layout tab of the Search Properties tabs to customize the content (columns) to display for each individual search. See Layout tab in Custom Searches and Search Properties for a detailed description of the Layout tab.