Reports can be customized by operators whose assigned role has any access right enabled for the Reports resource type. This includes editing existing report fields and selections, and creating custom report pages, visual displays and filtering.
By default only the Installer role has access to customize reports, but this can be edited in the Admin | Roles page.
Press CTRL+Z on your keyboard to undo unwanted changes, or navigate away from reports programming to discard all unsaved changes.
For practical examples of creating a report, see Report Programming Examples.
Report Pages
The tabs at the bottom of the Reports page provide access to report pages.
- Click on a report page tab to select the page for viewing or editing.
- Click the + icon to add a New page. This generates a new blank report page, ready to be customized.
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Right click on a report page to access options relating to that page.
- Duplicate Page: Creates a copy of the page to provide a base for a similar page, such as creating last hour, last day and last month versions of the same report page.
- Rename Page: Edit report page names.
- Delete Page: Remove unwanted report pages.
- Hide Page: This might be used to create underlying data or visuals in a report without those pages being visible to operators.
- Right click on a visual on a report page tab and select Copy visual to easily add it to other report pages.
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The File menu at the top of the page allows you to Save your report configurations. Changes are not committed until the report is saved.
The Save as option is not supported and will generate an error.
Note that the report page that is 'in focus' when you save your report configuration becomes the default view that operators will see when they navigate to reports. This includes if you hide a page and then save your configuration with the hidden page in focus, it will still appear as the default view for all operators.
If you navigate away from the reports page without saving, any changes will be lost. There is no prompt or warning to save your changes.
- The View menu at the top of the page provides options for customizing your report viewing experience. These options apply to your current viewing session only, and do not persist once you navigate away from reports programming.
Toolbar Options
The toolbar at the top of the page provides some additional navigation and formatting options.
- The navigating icon provides options for report navigation. These require configuration of associated reports for level and drill through navigation.
- A text box can be added to your report page for customization of report labeling, branding and information.
- Various shapes can be added with associated basic actions.
- You can include and customize buttons to provide functional links.
- Cross-highlighting and cross-filtering can be enabled on pages which have multiple interacting visuals.
- Refresh the page to update data in the report.
- Duplicate this page to create a copy of the current report page.
- Save this report to confirm your configuration changes.
Data
The Data pane lists all the available data fields which can be included in a report. Adding a data field allows you to display and/or filter by its associated values.
When you click on a visual in an existing report page you will see the data fields that are included in that report. To add a data field to the report, simply enable the checkbox beside the required data field.
When you select data fields for a new (blank) report page the fields will automatically be added to a 'Table' visualization. This is the default Power BI visual. You can change this and customize your visual to meet your reporting needs (see below).
The following data fields are available to be included in Protege X reports.
- ControllerID: The controller's Database ID. This can be identified in the controller's resource URL.
- ControllerName: The description in the controller's Name field.
- ControllerName2: The description in the controller's Name (Second Language) field.
- DeviceID: The controller's Serial Number.
- EventCode: The Event Type ID for each event.
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EventData0-7: The specific data components contained within events. Each EventData field relates to a specific record type, such as users, areas or inputs.
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These may be used to search, filter or report on specific values within events (for example, particular users, areas or event types), but require advanced understanding of event structure. It will generally be easier to use description filtering to achieve these requirements.
Note that each event type uses different parts of the event (EventData values) for different record types, so these are not directly translatable across all events.
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- EventDescription: The full Description of the event.
- FieldTime: The relative Time that the event was recorded (i.e. the time the event occurred, relative to your local time - this is not the controller time).
- ID: The Database ID of the unique event.
- LocationID: The location's Database ID. This can be identified in the location's resource URL.
- LocationName: The description in the location's Name field.
- LocationName2: The description in the location's Name (Second Language) field.
Visualizations
The Visualizations pane provides options for how data will appear on your report page. This includes the type of visual, specific formatting, and data field customization.
Build Visual
The Build visual section of the Visualizations pane is used for building the basic components of the report visual: the visual type and the data.
Visual Type
The first step in customizing the appearance of your visual is to select the type of visual you want to use to display the report data. The most commonly used visuals are bar charts, column charts and tables, but many more are available. The visual you use will depend on the type of data you will be displaying, as not all visual types will be suitable.
The details of all the visual types and their operation is beyond the scope of this help system. For more information you may want to search the available Microsoft Power BI documentation pages, such as this one. Remember that not all of the Power BI options are available in Protege X.
Data Fields
The section below the visual types allows you to customize the data fields included in the report visual. All data fields which have been selected in the data pane will be displayed here. You can also drag and drop data fields into this section.
- Depending on the visual type, fields can be reordered by dragging them into the preferred report page placements.
- If using a bar or column chart or similar you will need to specify the X-axis and Y-axis data fields.
- Fields can be renamed for the visual. Note that changing the name of the field also changes the name of the associated filter.
- Conditional formatting can be applied to fields. This might be used to highlight report data which contains specific text or where a value is above or below a defined threshold.
- Counts can also be applied to fields to display total instances of each record or value.
The full range of data field customizations is beyond the scope of this help system. For more information, see the relevant Microsoft Power BI information.
Format Page / Format Visual
The Format section of the Visualizations pane provides cosmetic options for customizing report appearance.
When no visual is selected, the Format your page section allows you to edit the general appearance of the overall report page. This includes customization of things like canvas settings, the background, the filters pane and filter cards.
When a visual is selected, the Format your visual section provides editing options which are specific to that visual and not applied to other visuals on the report page.
- The Visual tab allows you to edit things like the labels, fonts and colors associated with attributes of the visual, such as grids, bars, columns, headers and cells. For some visuals you can even include things like images and zoom sliders.
- On the General tab you can customize the size and position of the visual, its title, background, border and other related effects.
Analytics Features
For some visual types you can also select Add further analyses to your visual. This function is not supported by all visual types, but in general visuals with a measurable graphical comparison component provide the option to include additional graphical data references. The available options are dependent on the visual type and data customization included.
Filters
The Filters pane allows you to customize what data will be included on this report page or a specific visual by default. You can also add additional "blank" filters to the page to allow viewers to temporarily filter the data that is displayed.
The pane is separated into the following segments:
- Filters on this visual: Filters can be applied to a specific visual. This is the default behavior when data fields are selected for inclusion in a report.
- Filters on this page: Drag data fields onto this section if you want them to apply to all visuals on the current report page. This might be helpful to ensure that all visuals on a page are displaying data for the same defined parameters, such as a date range or location. This can also be used to filter reports by data fields which are not displayed on the visual.
- Filters on all pages: Drag data fields onto this section if you want them to apply to all report pages. Use this option with caution as it will apply any preconfiguration, and all live filtering selections, to all current report pages and any created in the future.
Be careful of duplicating filters across more than one of a visual, report page or all pages as this may produce unexpected report outcomes.
Filtering Options
Each filter card includes options for customizing the default report composition and the selections available to report viewers.
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Filter type and selections: Each data field filter has different options for making related data selections. These options allow you to preconfigure report visuals and pages to show data for a known set of criteria, such as date ranges, locations and events containing specific values.
For a detailed description of the filtering options available for each data field, see Report Filters.
- Lock filter: Locking the filter denies report viewers access to changing selections for this filter, so any preconfigured settings such as date range or location are fixed in the report view and cannot be further manipulated. This is a great way to preserve a report page so that the filter parameters are always known.
- Hide filter: Hiding the filter has a similar effect to locking, in that the report viewer cannot access the filter to change it, so preconfigured settings are maintained. The difference is the report viewer cannot see that the filter is applied - they do not see the filter in the pane and it is not included in the Filters on visual display.
- Clear filter: Clears all current selections for the filter.