Now that we've set up the Administrator Dashboard, we can shift over to the Report Portal, where our users will access reports.
The Report Portal
When you access the Report Portal, it displays the following login screen where you put in your user name and password. Here, we will log in with the admin user name and password that we created during Installation so that we can view the reports (name=administrator, password=secret). The Report Portal is divided into panes for each function like this:
- Categories are in the left pane
- Reports in the selected category (and their functions) are in the center pane
- Tabs with detailed information and settings for the selected report are in the right pane
The workflow goes from left to right: select a category in the left pane, select the report in the center, and manage report settings in the right pane.
Detailed Report Information
When you select a report in the center pane, detailed information about the report appears in the right pane. Note: What is displayed in the right pane depends on the permissions settings for the role of the current user. There are also some tabs that may not be displayed depending on permissions settings. For example, if the current user's role does not have permission to schedule reports, the Schedule and History tabs do not appear. Also, reports are displayed based on permissions assigned to the user's role. For information on setting permissions for roles, please refer to Creating Roles. When you log in as Jimmy, from Creating Users, you only see the following three tabs in the report info pane:
Info, Revisions, and Categories.
Jimmy is in the Product Managers role, so tabs that have permissions for other department roles are not displayed, and the Categories tab only enables him to create personal categories.
Displaying Reports in the Viewer
When you click the preview icon, the report generates and displays in the viewer. The following example shows the Sales Overview report in the viewer. In the viewer, you can perform a variety of report operations, such as printing, page management, and string searches. Also, you can save the report to other formats such as PDF or Excel. To convert a report, click Save As in the toolbar.
Report Search
In the Report Portal, you can also search for a report. For example, in the Search box in the left pane, type "Employee List" and press the Enter key to return all reports containing that string in the report name and list them in the center pane. Back to ActiveReports Server Quick Start Previous: Setting Report Permissions | Next: User Login