Getting Started
Posted on 12/11/2023
About BIRT Studio
BIRT Studio is a web-based report design tool used in the Pro WFM application. It allows users to create professional-looking reports quickly and easily without detailed understanding of database architecture or report design techniques. All that’s needed is a basic understanding of the data that is available for use and the ability to drag and drop fields onto a report canvas.
Who Is This Guide For
The guide on this page is meant to introduce someone unfamiliar with creating a custom report in BIRT Studio to the basic concepts and steps involved in creating a report. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to all of the features and functionality of BIRT Studio. For more information on how to do specific things within BIRT Studio that may be considered more advanced, please see the other articles in the sidebar to the left. If you’re viewing this on mobile, use the menu icon in the top left of your screen.
You will learn
- When to use reports
- How to create a Report Data Object (RDO)
- How to create a new report design
- How to add columns to a report design
- How to save and publish the report
- How to test your report
When to Use Reports
Reports are a great way to get data out of Pro WFM. They are easy to create and most dataviews can be turned into reports! However, there are some limitations to dataviews that reports do not have. For example, dataviews cannot be scheduled to run automatically. They also cannot be exported to PDF or Excel. Reports can do all of these things and more. While reports take a few more steps to get set up, they can be much more powerful than dataviews.
Creating Report Data Objects
To get started creating a Report Data Object (RDO), from the home menu of Pro WFM, open the menu and navigate to Application Setup > Common Setup > Report Data Object Management. This will open the Report Data Object Management screen.
Once on this page, click the Add button. This will open a dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, select the type of RDO you want to create. The options are Employee, Business Structure View, Employee - Time Series, and Business Structure - Time Series. Work Unit View and Work Unit - Time Series may be available if Healthcare Analytics is enabled. Most reports will use the Employee or Business Structure View option.
Once on this page, enter a Report Data Object Key. This is the name of the RDO and will be used to identify it when adding to any reports. A Description is optional. The TimeFrame of the RDO is required but the default of Selected Time Period is perfect for most reports.
See our doc about the Relative Time Period to learn more about how to create reports that use this feature.
It is best practice to use the same name for the RDO as the report you are creating. This will make it easier to find the RDO when adding it to the report. Standard naming conventions for RDOs include ReportName_DO or ReportName_version where version is the version number of the report if making multiple iterations.
The Column Relationship Rules checkbox may not be visible in your environment. If it is not, it needs to be enabled through a Feature Switch. Enable the Feature Switch from Application Setup > System Configuration > Feature Switch. The Feature Switch is called Ability to Disable Column Relationship Rules.
Adding Columns to RDO
To add columns to an RDO, click the Add button. This will open the Select Column screen. From the Select Column screen, select the columns you want to add to the RDO and click the Add Column button. For each column, you have the option of changing the default Label. Clicking the Add Column button will add the columns to the RDO and close the Select Column screen. Once you are done, click the Save button to save the RDO.
To read more about relationship rules, how to use them effectively and how they affect your report, see the Relationship Rules article.
Creating Report Design
Once your RDO is created, you can create a report design. To do this, open the menu and navigate to Application Setup > Common Setup > Unpublished Reports. This will open the Unpublished Reports page. Once on this page, click the Create button. This will open BIRT Studio. If the button says Create Design, click it and select Common Report from the dropdown menu.
The above page will open. This is the BIRT Studio application. From here, you can create your report design. This is where you will add your columns, filters, and other report elements.
Adding RDO to Report Design
With BIRT Studio open, the next step is adding your RDO to the report design. From the top menu, select Data > Manage Data. This opens the Manage Data window to select the RDO you want to use. In the area labeled Available Data, select the RDO you want to use and click the icon in the middle between the two areas. This will move the RDO to the Selected Data area. Click OK to close the Manage Data window.
Do not delete the Hyperfind_DO during this step or when in the Manage Data window. This is the RDO that is used to generate the available Hyperfinds in the application. If this Data Object is deleted, there will no longer be a Hyperfind dropdown when previewing the report and you will need to know the Hyperfind ID to run the report.
The RDOs available will only be those that were created as Custom RDOs. Standard and Read-Only RDOs do not appear in this window. If you need to use a Standard RDO, you will need to go through the process to duplicate a Standard report and its RDO. See the Modifying Standard Reports article for more information.
Once the RDO has been added to the report, the Save button will become active. It is optional to save the report at this time but if you do, a new window will open asking to enter a File Name. The File Name is the name of the file that lives on the BIRT server. It is best practice to use the same name as the RDO.
If you do not save the report now, you can do so later. You should see a screen that looks like the one below with nothing in the left sidebar. This is normal.
To get the left sidebar to populate, click anywhere in the center of the bordered box. Once you click in the box, you will see two folders appear in the left sidebar. One will be called Data Objects/YourRDOName and the other will be the Data Objects/Hyperfind_DO that you saw when adding the RDO to the report earlier.
Adding Columns to Report
To begin adding columns to the report design, expand the BaseDataSet for your RDO. Inside will be the columns that were added to it. They will appear by their Labels that were set. To add a column to the report, drag it from the left sidebar to the report canvas. Multiple columns can be selected at once in the order you’d like them to appear in the report by first clicking the first column and then Ctrl + LMB Once you have added all of the columns you want to use, click the Save button. If you did not save after adding the Report Data Object, you will be prompted to enter a File Name. Enter a name and click OK. You do not need to change anything else in this dialog.
If you are having trouble getting the table to generate, try dragging the column(s) into the bordered text box at the top of the canvas, under the report header.
Publishing a Report
That’s it! You’ve created your first (and possibly very basic) report. Now you need to publish it so that it can be used in the application. To do this, open the menu and navigate to Application Setup > Common Setup > Unpublished Reports. This will open the Unpublished Reports page. Once on this page, select the report you want to publish and click the Publish button. This directs you to the Unpublished Reports - Create Published Report page.
On this page, the following fields are available (items marked with an asterisk are required):
- Report Name * - This is the name of the report that will appear in the application. It is best practice to use the same name as the RDO.
- Report Description - This is the description of the report that will appear in the application. Optional.
- Default Output Type * - This is the default output type of the report. The options are PDF, Excel, Interactive, and CSV.
- Output Formats * - This is the output formats that will be available for the report. The options are PDF, Excel, Interactive, and CSV. Multiple options can be selected.
- Currency Display As - This is the symbol that will be used for any currency/wage fields in the report. Options are Logged-in User and Employee Assigned. Optional.
- Category - This is the category that the report will appear under in the application. Optional.
- Report Parameters - This is the table that includes all of the report parameters for the report. In a Custom report with no custom parameters, the items listed will be
- TimeFrame - Provides the Timeframe dropdown when running the report.
- HyperFindSelector - Provides the Hyperfind dropdown when running the report.
- ShowChart - Provides the “Show Chart” radio buttons when running the report. This is the only one that should be updated by changing the Display from true to false.
Setting the TimeFrame and HyperFindSelector parameters to Display = false will hide these parameters when running the report and the default values of these are Today and All Home. Setting these parameters to Required = false will cause the report to fail. These parameters are required for the report to run.
Once you are OK with all of the settings, click the Save button. This will publish the report and redirect you to the Published Reports page.
Congratulations on publishing your first custom report!
Testing Your Report
The last step of any good process is to test our work. To test the report you just created, navigate from the home page to the Report Library by clicking the menu and selecting Dataviews & Reports > Report Library. This will open the Report Library page. Once on this page, click the Run Report button.
This will slide open a drawer from the right side of the screen called Select Report. Expand the category that you published the report under and select the report you want to run by clicking it then clicking the Select button at the bottom of the drawer. Once you have the desired parameters (a good test is usually Today for All Home, depending on how large your All Home is), click the Run Report button. This will start the report process. While the report is running, it will show up as a tile under the In Progress section of the Report Library page. Once the report is done running, it will move to the Completed section of the Report Library page. Clicking the tile will prompt you to download the report file if it was anything other than Interactive.