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Reporting & Report Scheduling





OneDesk ships with some pre-set report templates. These let you quickly generate reports on tickets, tasks, projects, timesheets, and invoices with just a few clicks. However OneDesk also lets you create your own report templates, schedule them so that they run without your interaction and be automatically emailed out to you, your team, or your management.


Reports in OneDesk


OneDesk’s reports are a powerful tool for analyzing and displaying information about your day-to-day activities. To access the reporting functionality in OneDesk, go to More Applications >> Analytics >> Scheduled Reports tab.



Within this tab you can view/edit existing report templates, create your own templates, and view any past reports which have been run.

Reports can be run or sent via email in XLS or PDF converted from XLS. 

There are a number of pre-built reports in a new OneDesk account. Hover over any of these reports and select the icons on the right side to: run, schedule, edit or delete the report. When you create a new report template it will appear at the end of the list. 


How OneDesk’s reporting tools are structured

To get started using OneDesk’s reporting tools, you need to first understand a few basic concepts.

 

The definition of the data to report on:

  • The application (tickets, tasks, timesheets, etc…) that the report will be run on.
  • Any filters or project-level you choose, to refine the data reported on. (eg. a specific team, or customer, time period, etc.)

 

The information to display in the report:

  • The layout to be used.
  • The columns of properties to be included in the report.
  • How you want to group the data (for some layouts).


Report schedules:

These describe when and how frequently a specified report template is run and the report created. They cover:

  • The frequency of when the report will run (daily, weekly, etc.).
  • The start date and time of the first report. Afterwards, the frequency will determine the timing of the subsequent reports.
  • The output format. Excel by default, but you can convert it to PDF instead.
  • Who, if anybody, to email the report document to.


Scheduling a report 

  1. Select the calendar icon beside the desired report template. 
  2. Choose the frequency and start date of the scheduled report. 
  3.  Select the individual(s) you want this report sent to. The email with the the attached report will be sent based on the start date and frequency. 
  4. Select the format for the report. Default is XLS, an Excel spreadsheet format. 



Create new custom report

1.Select 'New Template'


2. Select the report type or for a custom report, choose the layout type. 


Basics of custom report layout types (also see some example below): 

  • Table - Basic report with each selected property displayed in columns.
  • Grouped Table - Report with selected properties displayed as columns but separated and grouped by the selected grouping.
  • Table with Pie Chart - Report with a pie chart and its data in another tab. 
  • Table with Linear Chart - Report with linear chart and its data in another tab.
  • Use my own layout - Upload an XLS report layout you have created yourself. 

3.Select the application you want to report on. In other words if you want a report on ticket properties, select the tickets application. 


4. Add the columns to display in the report. The columns correspond to the various properties available on the selected item. For instance, if you have selected tickets, you will be able to select properties like the ticket's creation date, the assignee of the tickets, the ticket's description, and so on. The order in which you select the columns will be the order in which it is displayed in the report. 


5.Select the project-level as well as any filters to reduce which items you are reporting on.


6.(if Grouped Table):  If you have selected grouped table as the layout, you will be prompted to select the grouping. 

6. (if Chart): Select the property to summarize, the summary method, and the property to group by.

  • Property to summarize - For example, what you want each 'slice of the pie' to represent. Summary method - If you want to calculate the values of the property select 'Sum of Value' . If you want to count the items themself select 'Item Count'.Property to group by - How the data will be grouped.


7. Optionally, schedule the report. If you skip this step the template will be created and appear at the end of your template list. There you can run or schedule it as you wish.


Example - Create a custom pie chart report

Let's create an example report. For this example, I want a breakdown of billable work performed by my team over the last month. Therefore, let's create a new report and select 'Timesheets". 


Next let's select the properties I would like to appear as columns in my report. You must include the columns for properties you want to use in your chart. So since I want a report on work performed, I should be sure to select 'Actual Work.'



Next let's choose to filter down the items included in my report. For example I want to select a specific customer's portfolio. I also only want to see billable timesheets from the last 30 days, so we will filter to these properties. 



Next select the properties to be used to create the chart. For my example, I would like a pie with each slice representing the work done by an assignee. I will therefore select ‘Actual Work’ as the property I would like to summarize. I would like to sum the work (not count the timesheets), so I will select ‘Sum of value’. I would like the results grouped by the assignee, so I will select to group by ‘User Name’.


Give your report a name and choose to schedule it if you wish. Now let's see our example report. First I get a non-editable Excel which I then have to click to enable editing. I may also need to refresh the pivot chart or pivot table data by right clicking on it and selecting “Refresh Data”.



The End report will look something like this. It is an excel document which I can then modify if I want to. The document consists of 2 tabs, the report itself and the data from which the report was generated.



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