How to use a Report
Drilldowns
On some visuals, you may be able to drill down into the data to get a closer look at a particular subset.
Drill down all fields at once
Go down to the next level in the hierarchy, showing the category below. For instance, from the project hierarchy we could go from project type to project, showing all of the projects.
Drill down one field at a time
Select a specific category and show the next level in the hierarchy specifically for this category. For instance, from project type Collaborative R&D to projects AtFutureBEV, ESCAPE etc.
You can either toggle this button (will turn dark grey) and select the category you would like to drill into or right click on the category and select ‘drill down’.
Expand Fields
Shows the next hierarchy down from the current field alongside the current field. In our case, this would show both project type and projects.
Drill Up
To return to the highest level, click the up button until it greys out or reset the filters (see below).
Filters and Resetting
Filters may be available either directly on the report page or in the filter bar to the right of the page. Go wild with these, as it can all be reset using the teal reset button above the report page if you’d like to get back to the original settings.
Some filters are essential for page function and so are locked (see right, Project Status Type has a padlock on the filter for this page).
Expanding Visuals
You can expand a visual to show it fullscreen by selecting the visual then pressing the expand button above the visual itself. You can then navigate back using the back button once you’ve finished looking at that one in particular.
Help Icons
When clicking on a visual, a help icon may pop up.
Selecting on visuals and cross-filtering
If you select a particular part of a graph or table, it will highlight or cross-filter the other visuals on the page to show your selection’s data. You can select again or click off on a blank space to reset this.
Highlight:
Cross-Filter:
Refresh Schedules
These will be stated in the front page. The data, unless stated, will have a weekly or daily scheduled refresh to minimise loading times of visuals and when you filter the report. If there are any problems with the scheduled refresh, an email will be sent to the business systems team who will rectify this as soon as possible. Depending on the source of the data, if the data is refreshed and pulled from the system hourly but no one is updating the data itself hourly, it will show as being refreshed in the last hour but the data itself will not have been updated. This is something that may especially affect data sources where the data is not automatically generated and dependent on someone manually inputting data.
If you need something updated and refreshed as of today, you can ask the business systems team to refresh the data manually. We will check that the data itself is updated, then refresh manually for you. The refresh can take up to an hour to complete.
We can also create live data access to Dynamics, which means that data is pulled each time you open a page or change the filters. This increases loading times, but may be more appropriate for your report – speak to the business intelligence analyst to discuss the best approach for your report.
Requesting Access
Some reports may not have been made available to you, but that doesn’t always mean you’re not allowed to see them! Please contact the business systems team to request access to a report and mention why you need it. This will then be processed and confirmed and you’ll get a response as soon as we have verified everything.