Managed Reporting Interfaces and Tools

Managed Reporting offers you a selection of products and reporting tools that you use to create and edit portals and reports, manipulate data in an existing report, submit a report for background processing, and view a report.

Business Intelligence Portal (BI Portal). The BI Portal enables you to build complete, modern websites, with multi-levels of navigation. You can have as many levels as you like.

Content is dynamic and end users experience the drag-and-drop behavior that they are familiar with in popular online portals. This is a key feature, as end users do not need to learn anything new.

While at work, people should have the same satisfying experiences that they have every day when reading news, reading email, and performing other activities. With the BI Portal, the result is zero product training and a high usage rate.

With this product, a portal is easy to build. The BI Portal uses the same familiar ribbon interface that the InfoAssist report development tool uses. Building a portal is just a matter of a few clicks and drag-and-drop actions. With the BI Portal, anyone who can build a report using InfoAssist can develop an impressive portal without any knowledge of web design. For more information on the BI Portal, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User's Guide. For questions on licensing, contact your TIBCO representative.

App Studio. Is a Windows-based graphical user interface (GUI) development environment that enables you to build WebFOCUS applications in a single, multi-operational interface. App Studio can be configured as a stand-alone entity, or to operate against a full WebFOCUS environment.

App Studio utilizes the Microsoft Windows® ribbon framework to deliver an interactive user interface (UI) from which you can build multiple business intelligence applications in the same workspace.

In App Studio, you can do the following:

• Access data and descriptions. Using the Metadata canvas, you can create new synonyms, and view or modify existing synonyms, in a graphical user interface. Synonyms enable you to access and interpret data sources for use in reporting applications.
• Create reporting applications. Build reporting procedures in the Report Canvas, Chart Canvas, HTML Canvas, or Document Canvas.
• Reports. Display your data in a tabular format. You can create stand-alone reporting procedures, or add the report to a document or an HTML page.
• Charts. Communicate your data in a more illustrative format. You can translate complex data into an easy-to-read and understandable visual format. This often provides a new perspective to the information that users view. You can create stand-alone charting procedures or add the chart to a document or an HTML page.
• HTML pages. Build webpages for users to launch, view, and analyze data. You can add multiple reports and charting procedures to an HTML page, in addition to the controls that enable you to manipulate the data. You can also apply styling through the use of cascading style sheets, JavaScript files, and jQuery animations.
• Documents. Combine multiple report and charting procedures in a single output that you can organize and format. You can also add pre-process and post-process codes to customize how your document is executed.
• Visualizations. Create charts, maps, and grids to visually represent your data. You can add multiple visuals to the canvas to create a complete visualization, and you can update, change, or revise the visualization at any time to account for shifts in data needs.
• Alerts. Create event-driven procedures that apply test conditions and then trigger customized reports if the test conditions are true. You can schedule an Alert using ReportCaster Distribution Methods.
• Reporting Objects. Transform complex views of data into simple objects that are labeled with common business terminology for users to understand and use as templates to create their own reports.

Designer. Is a web-based development tool that you can use to develop interactive, responsive pages and meaningful InfoApps, using content that you or other members of your organization develop. The Designer offers an integrated filter control capability that enables you to create compelling applications. Other features include an interactive canvas, responsive grid layout, streamlined resources tree, and intuitive ways of adding content to a page. The Designer also offers a modern user interface with simplified navigation and the flexibility to build filtered responsive pages that are compatible with many browsers or mobile devices.

For more information on Designer, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User's Guide.

InfoAssist. Is a reporting tool that extends the power of Managed Reporting. InfoAssist provides business users with the most advanced, yet simple to use, ad hoc reporting features needed to create intricate reports, charts, and documents from any enterprise information source without IT intervention.

InfoAssist is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) that delivers cutting-edge functionality using a familiar Microsoft® Office-like interface. This highly intuitive environment shields users from the underlying technical complexities associated with ad hoc reporting features, while providing access to all the functionality needed to address mission-critical information requirements. This powerful ad hoc reporting tool enables rapid and efficient design and deployment of reports and charts. It uses an interactive and fully customizable WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) development environment. Users receive instant feedback throughout the development process to ensure that reports and charts are properly built.

• Insight. Insight, available in InfoAssist HTML5 Chart mode, is a visualization tool for interactively selecting measures and dimensions. The chart type determines the field containers that display. For example, for a pie chart, you can specify values for the following field containers: Measure, Rows, Columns, Color, and Size. In many cases, these field containers mirror the field containers that display when working with InfoAssist. With Insight, you can build a chart that shows the data fields in real time. It even rebuilds as you select additional fields or specify filters to customize the data that displays. Insight helps you make quick decisions, particularly because you can change and adapt field selections quickly, and easily view different scenarios. Add and remove fields, at any time, and in any pattern, to enhance your chart. You can take advantage of the customization options that are available right from the toolbar.

For more information on InfoAssist and Insight, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® InfoAssist User's Manual.

Deferred Receipt. Deferred Receipt is a report request submission option that allows you to submit a report for background processing. Once you submit a report, you can continue working in Managed Reporting while WebFOCUS processes the report. You then use the Deferred Report Status Interface to view the report output and save the report as private content.

WebFOCUS Viewer. The WebFOCUS Viewer displays report output one page at a time. This tool is useful for reports that contain a large number of pages. Only the first page is sent from the web server to your browser. The WebFOCUS Viewer enables you to page through the output, as well as search for a specific string of text.

Alert Reports. You are able to create an Alert report that will first apply test conditions (rules or events to be checked against a data source) that specify when to create a report. ReportCaster can then be used to specify how often you would like the conditions to be checked and distribute the report to users whenever the conditions are met (true).

For more information about Alert reports and scheduling Alert reports with ReportCaster, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® ReportCaster Guide.

For more information about the Alert Assistant tool, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User's Guide.

Mobile Viewer. You can use the Mobile Viewer web-based interface to share published content with other users, from a basic URL. To use this feature, you do not need to save content as a Mobile Favorite or create a portal. Instead, you can organize published content in a folder and distribute the URL to this folder to users.

Favorites. Favorites provides you a convenient and fast way to find and use your favorite content, and also allows you to access your content from a mobile device.

For more information, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User's Guide.

ReportCaster. Is an optional product that provides a single point of management for report scheduling and distribution. ReportCaster enables you to provide essential, updated information directly to the people who need it, on time, automatically.

With ReportCaster, you can:

• Schedule reports to be run once or repeatedly.
• Burst reports to send specific values in a report to different users, files, or printers.
• Distribute report output using Email, FTP or SFTP, Printer, Repository, Report Library, and file system locations that are defined by the WebFOCUS Client configuration and user authorization. Repository and Report Library reports are stored in the WebFOCUS Repository.
• Maintain scheduled jobs, the address book of distribution lists, and log files.

For more information about ReportCaster, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® ReportCaster Guide.