Reporting → Using Custom Reports → Report Reference → Distribution Reports → Custom Distribution Reports

Custom Distribution Reports

Distribution reports summarize categories of items. For example, you can create a report totaling the type of primary items in a project and show subtotals against the states of the primary items. This report is useful for managers who need totals, counts, or summarized information in an easy-to-read format. Distribution reports appear as tabular or graphical reports.

Content Options

The following options are available in the Content area for Custom Distribution reports:

  • Report Item Type

    Contains the primary table for the selected application and any auxiliary tables for which you have privileges. Select the table that contains the information for the report.

  • Report Project

    For reports based on primary tables, the project you select when creating a report determines which items are returned in your report. The project selection also determines where the report is stored and which users can access the report. For example, if you select Project A, only users who have privileges to run reports in Project A can run the report.

    For details, refer to Selecting a Report Project.

  • Report Style

    Choose to display your report as a tabular report or as an area chart, bar chart, horizontal bar chart, line chart, percentile stacked bar chart, scatter chart, stacked bar chart, or tape chart.

    Consider the following information when you select a report style:

    • For graphical reports, labels may be truncated for fields that contain long selection values.

    • If you select a tape chart and your data set contains more than five items, the lines in the chart may appear as black.

  • Row and Column

    Select fields that appear in the report. Rows appear horizontally and columns display vertically. You can choose selection fields, such as User, Single Selection, Binary/Trinary, Multi-Group, Multi-User, and Multi-Selection fields.

Note: The Secondary Owner field is not available for use as a row in this report.

To suppress values for the field you select, use the options available in the Sorting section. For details, refer to Sorting.

Search Filters

Search filters enable you to narrow your search for items. Depending on your privileges, you can define basic conditions or Advanced SQL Conditions.

Note: You can change the type of condition the report uses, but your search criteria is not converted. For example, if you specify an Advanced SQL condition, and then select the Use Basic Conditions option, your Advanced SQL is not converted to a basic condition.

Select the following options for creating a search filter for your report:

Option Description
Include Items From Sub-projects Select this check box to include items from sub-projects of the project selected from the Report Project list. This option is not available for reports created against auxiliary tables.
Show Search Filter In Results Select this option to display your Search Filter settings in the output of the report. This option allows report viewers to see which filters are used in the report. It is also helpful when you select to print a report, since it displays which Query At Runtime parameters were selected.
Limit selections using field dependencies and project selections

Select this check box to use the project's field dependency rules.

For example, in Project A, the Priority field has a dependency with the Severity field. The dependency states that when the Severity field is Critical, then the Priority field must be 1 or 2.

You create a Details report on Project A and add a Search Specification of Severity in Critical. Then, you add a Search Specification for the Priority field. The available Field Values for the Priority field will be limited to 1 and 2.

Note: Changing this setting does not affect values that have already been selected.
Use Basic Conditions Allow you to define a search filter by making selections from the list of fields. For detailed information about using basic conditions, refer to Using Basic Conditions in SBM Reports.
Use Advanced SQL Conditions

(on-premise customers only)

SQL (Structured Query Language) is an industry-standard language for selecting records from a database. For detailed information about using Advanced SQL conditions in SBM reports, refer to Using Advanced SQL Conditions in SBM Reports.

Sorting

By default, all values for fields selected for the report's row and column appear in the report. However, you can suppress and reorder Row and Column field values. For example, if you select the Submitter field for the row, you can choose to display the number of issues submitted by specific users rather than by all users who submitted issues.

To suppress Row and Column field values:

  1. In the Sorting section of the Distribution report form, click the Modify button in the Show Only Row Field Values area.
  2. The field values for the field selected in the Row list appear in the left pane. Select the values you want to appear in the report, and then click the right arrow to move the values to the right pane.
    Tip: If there are more field selections than can be returned based on administrative settings, use the Value Find feature to search for values.
  3. Use the up and down arrows to reorder the values as needed.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Click the Modify button in the Show Only Column Field Values area.
  6. The field values for the field selected in the Column list appear in the left pane. Use the Value Find as needed. Select the values you want to appear in the report, and then click the right arrow to move the values to the right pane.
  7. Use the up and down arrows to reorder the values as needed.
  8. Click OK.

Additional Options

The following options are available in the Additional Options area of the Custom Distribution report form. These options can be considered "advanced" report options.

  • Use Logarithmic Scale (Graphs only)

    Select this check box to apply a logarithmic scale to your report. You may want to do this to reduce your report results to a manageable range if they cover a large range of values. This option only applies to certain report styles, such as line, scatter and bar charts.

  • Show Whole Rows and Columns of Zero (0)

    By default, Distribution reports do not show rows that have only zeros as values. Select this check box to show the rows that only have zeros as values.

  • Thresholds

    Thresholds allow you to apply visual indicators to your report that inform you when data rises above or falls below numbers you specify. Apply a color to each threshold that appears in the background of the report.

    You can set a high threshold, a low threshold, or both. Thresholds cannot be used with percentile stacked bar charts or pie charts. The following threshold options are available:

    • Set High Threshold Greater Than – Type a number that indicates a high threshold when the report data is greater than that number. For a report that tracks the number of items submitted by particular users, you may want to set a high threshold that indicates when over 75 items have been submitted.

    • Set Low Threshold Less Than – Type a number that indicates a low threshold when the report data is lower than that number. For a report that tracks the number of items submitted by particular users, you may want to set a low threshold that indicates when fewer than 10 items have been submitted.

    • Using Color – Click the Color link for each threshold to open the Select Color dialog box and select a color for each threshold. You must select a color if you set a high or low threshold. The color for each threshold appears in the background of the report.

  • Footer
    Optionally, supply a footer for your report.
    Note: The footer renders some common HTML tags such as <i>, <b>, and <font>. However, this means that character entity references such as >, <, ", and & are not encoded in the footer. Therefore, in order to display <Some Text> in the footer, you must send the following encoded sequence: &lt;Some Text&gt;.
  • Optional HTML Template

    This drop-down list contains HTML templates for customizing the look of your report. Provided templates include excellist.htm, which improves the display of Listing report results when they are exported (by right-clicking the report output and then selecting Export to Microsoft Excel), and massselectlist.htm, which provides buttons at the top of the page, enabling you to select or clear the check boxes for all items in the results list. Your administrator can customize report templates, and the templates in the list may or may not apply to the type of report you are creating. Select the template from the drop-down list.

Drill-Down Display Options

The following options are available in the Drill-Down Display Options area of the report form. They enable you to specify which fields to include in the drill-down reports as well as column widths and sorting criteria.
Note:
  • Drill-Down Display Options may not be available if your administrator has disabled Flash components or in browsers that do not support HTML5.
  • You cannot drill down into a report when it is contained in a Drill Through report and used to drive another report. See Drill Through Reports for more information.
The following table describes each of the fields that you use to specify drill-down display options:
Field Description
Value Display Format Select this check box to use the default columns for the drill-down report. Clear the check box to enable the Select Columns to Display feature.
Select Columns to Display Select the fields that you want to appear as columns in the drill-down reports. To select or deselect a field, move it to or from the right-hand box using the arrow buttons.
Set Custom Field Widths Optionally, specify the width (in pixels) for the columns in the drill-down reports.
Sorting Select the fields on which you want to sort the data in the drill-down reports.

Results

Custom Distribution reports return a tabular or graphical representation of items based on your report criteria.

The following information and options appear with Custom Distribution report results.

Field Description
Show TSV Click this button to open a window that displays the report in a tab-delimited format. This enables you to copy the report information and paste it into a spread sheet application, such as Microsoft Excel.
Note: This option is not available for graphical reports. Alternatively, you can choose the Excel option to export report results.
Graph or Table Depending on the style you selected when you created this report, a table or graph showing the data that meets the report parameters displays.
Drill-Down Distribution reports can be clicked to display detailed information about the report results. For example, if your report contains a count of items submitted by a specific set of users, each count of items submitted by a user appears as a link (tabular display) or clickable slice (graphical display). Click the count number to display a Listing report of those items. Zero counts do not appear as links. To return to the original report after viewing the Listing report, click the Back to Results link.
Tip: If links are not available on the drill-down report, simplify the report specifications on your originating report.
Note: For Rich Graphical Reports, you must disable slicing before you can click to drill-down.
Thresholds If you configured thresholds on the report form, the color you indicated for each threshold displays on the report background.
Note: If you do not have privileges to view data from specific fields, the information appears as asterisks in the report.

Copyright © 2013–2014 Serena Software, Inc. All rights reserved.