Creating a Report

The Report Wizard guides you through the steps required to create a report. The wizard works the same way in the GUI and in the Web interface. When creating a report, you select a report type that determines how the report data is organized.

Windchill RV&S client provides default report types; however, your administrator can create custom report types. The two report types are:

Basic reports allow you to select the item fields to include in the report and specify how the report data sorts.

Detail reports allow you to select component fields (item fields, change package fields, attachment fields, time entry fields, and fields on related items) to include in the report and how the report data sorts.

• The report types, template preview images, styles, and logos available in the wizard are Windchill RV&S defaults and/or created by your administrator. To modify these elements or create your own, see your administrator or the Windchill RV&S Installation and Upgrading Guide.

• Only HTML based report types display long text fields formatted with rich content and allow HTML formatting in the output. For XML and CSV report types, HTML formatting options do not display in the report wizard panels and any HTML tags in rich content fields are discarded.

• Reports can do more than just display field information. You can also perform arithmetic calculations between numeric fields, displaying the values in the report. For example, you can add up column totals or count the number of items in a specific state. To perform these calculations, you create a computed expression.

• You cannot create or edit a query while creating a report.

• A report can be edited by the user who created it. Principals (users and groups) that a report is shared with can edit it if they have edit permissions assigned to them by the report creator. Only the report creator or an administrator can delete the report.

• Because reports are based on queries, reports are subject to visibility rules set by your administrator. Visibility rules restrict access to specific information based on project and/or item type. For more information, see the Windchill RV&S Installation and Upgrading Guide, or contact your administrator.

• Symbolic dates in rules and queries are evaluated on the Windchill RV&S client’s time zone.

• If you do not specify a date or date/time format where applicable, the following defaults are provided: date format with a standard locale-specific date or date/time format with a standard locale-specific date that includes hours and minutes.

• Relevance and editability rules are evaluated on the Windchill RV&S client’s time zone.

• Computed expressions return dates/times in the Windchill RV&S client’s time zone and perform calculations in the Windchill RV&S server’s time zone where appropriate.

• Report types “Detail - HTML, Column, Relationships Context” and “Detail - HTML, Column, Relationships Structure” result in large reports that can take a long time to display in a browser window.

• The report type “Basic - HTML, Schedule” displays one month before and after the current day. Values that exceed 30 days are ignored.

• Creating deeply nested reports with a large number of inter-related items can create extremely large reports and/or cause the Windchill RV&S server to stop responding. When creating a report, take into consideration that the average number of links per item and the number of levels in the report multiply the size of the report.

• Although the electronic signature fields Signed By and Signature Comment are only visible in an item’s history (if enabled by your administrator), you can report on the historical values by specifying the fields in the report wizard.

• If document versioning is enabled, the report types created by your administrator may include report tags to filter by live or versioned items. If a report type does not include the appropriate filter, contact your administrator or modify the backing query to include a query filter that displays live or versioned items.

• The Windchill RV&S client GUI and Web interface include icons to indicate live fields (

) and ambiguous computed fields (

) in versioned items; however, reports cannot display these icons. Your administrator may include report tags to indicate whether or not field values in a report are live or ambiguous.

• Your administrator can configure report recipes to display in your locale.