Overview - View BIRT Reports with the Actuate Viewer

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In this lesson you will view a BIRT report and interact with it using the Actuate Viewer. This lesson demonstrates:

• Run a report on-demand and saving the results to iServer Express.
• Use the Actuate Viewer to navigate through the pages of a report.
• Export report data to CSV or TSV.
• Export the report, with formatting, to Excel®, PDF, Word, or PowerPoint®.
• Display the report’s table of contents, and using it to navigate through the report.
• Start the Interactive Viewer.
• View a report document that was previously generated.

Contents 1 Report Viewers 2 Get Started 3 Run and Save an On-Demand Report 4 View a Report 5 Using the Interactive Viewer 6 View a Report Document 7 Learn More

Report Viewers

The iPortal Web interface to iServer Express provides three options for viewing BIRT reports:

Actuate Viewer is the simplest viewing option. It provides capabilities such as navigating between report pages, exporting to a file, displaying a table of contents, etc.

Interactive Viewer includes all the features of Actuate Viewer plus the ability to personalize the user's view of a report. Examples of the interactive features include hiding/showing columns, adding aggregations and calculated columns, changing formatting, altering sorting, and filtering data displayed in the report. The Interactive Viewer lets each end user modify the view of the report so that it better suits his/her needs, without increasing the workload on report developers or IT staff.

BusinessReport Studio is an optional component of iPortal that allows end users to create their own reports entirely over the Web. It includes all the features of the Interactive Viewer plus full-blown report editing features.

This lesson introduces the Actuate Viewer and Interactive Viewer. The first step is to run a report so we have something to view.

Get Started

At the end of the previous lesson we were looking at list of sample reports. If you are not there now, go ahead and browse to there:

• Open the folder named “/Public/BIRT and Business Reports Examples”.

Here's what you should see:

Run and Save an On-Demand Report

In the previous lesson you ran a report on-demand then immediately viewed it in the web browser. The report results were not saved back to iServer Express. This is the default way to run reports when you just click on the name of the report.

This time, let’s run the report on-demand and immediately view it, and also save the resultant report document back to iServer Express. That way, you can share the report output with colleagues without their having to re-run the report.

Notice that in the report listing, next to each report or document name, there are icons on the far right side:

Note: Some reports have an “Edit” icon as well. These are BusinessReports: special report types that users can create using the optional BusinessReport Designer built into iPortal. BusinessReports are based on the BIRT file format and have additional features. Refer to the BusinessReport Evaluation Guide for more information.

• Find the report “Sales By Customer” in the list.
• Click on its “Run and Save” icon.

A window pops up asking where the report document should be saved on iServer Express. The server provides the familiar file/folder system for storing files. Shared folders store reports available to all users (depending on security), while private folders provide a place to put documents private to a each pereson.

• Accept all the default values for now to save the report document to the administrator user’s home folder.
• Click the Finish button.

View a Report

After a few seconds, the report document appears.

Note: If you get an error dialog stating that pop-ups are disabled, then visit Enable Pop-ups for iPortal.

This report document is displayed in the Actuate Viewer. It can display the results of BIRT reports and Business Reports. First, look at the page navigation toolbar at the top of the report.

• Experiment with the CD-style buttons to go the next and previous page, to skip to the end or the beginning of the report, or to go directly to a particular page.

• Next, click on the icons on the Actuate Viewer’s toolbar to interact with the report in some basic ways:

Click on each of the icons and see the dialog box that pops up.

• Try printing the report in PDF to your local printer
• Try exporting the report data to CSV format.
• Try exporting the report data with formatting to PowerPoint.
• Display the report’s Table of Contents and use it to quickly navigate to “Signal Gift Stores → 10124”

Using the Interactive Viewer

The Actuate Interactive Viewer is an iServer Express option. It is enabled in the trial version. Click on the “Interactive Viewer” link in the upper right corner of the Actuate Viewer to enable many additional interactive features. The toolbar will change and display the following icons:

The Interactive Viewer allows end users to modify their view of reports to their liking. Things they can do include:

• Hide or show additional/show, and reorder columns
• Create calculated columns and aggregations
• Filter the data displayed in the report
• Change grouping and sorting
• Change the type of chart
• Reorder columns
• Change grouping
• Add page breaks
• Change the report formatting, including fonts, number formatting, and text alignment

After a user modifies their view of the report, he/she can save it back to iServer Express. The next time the user runs this report, the report will appear with the latest data, displayed with the user's own modifications. For more detail on how to use the Interactive Viewer, please refer to the product documentation.

• Experiment with the Interactive Viewer by clicking on icons, report tables, columns, and charts.
• When finished, close the browser window with the Interactive Viewer.
• Open the browser window displaying the iPortal Documents listing.

View a Report Document

A report document saves the results of an report run. Earlier in this lesson you did a “Run and Save” of the Sales by Customer report. The resulting report document was saved to the iServer Express report repository in the administrator's home folder. Let's now view that report.

• Navigate to the administrator user’s home folder using the navigation tree in the left side-bar.

• Click on the Sales by Customer report to display it in the Actuate Viewer.

When viewing a report document you are looking at data that is stored in the repository from the previous report run.

• When finished, close the browser window for the Actuate Viewer. Leave open the web browser window displaying the list of documents.

Learn More

The following product manuals at http://www.birt-exchange.com/modules/documentation/ provide more information.

• BIRT Deployment → iServer Express Report Server → Using Actuate iServer Express → Generating reports → Viewing a report
• Ad-Hoc & Interactive Reporting → Interactive Viewer for End Users → Viewing Actuate BIRT Reports and Business Reports

The same documentation is available in your iServer Express install:

• http://localhost:8900/iportal/help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm (substitute the proper machine name for "localhost" if iPortal is on another machine.) → Using iPortal for Actuate iServer Express → Generating reports → Viewing a report
• Help for the Interactive Viewer is available by clicking the help icon (red question mark) in the upper right corner of the Interactive Viewer page.

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This page has been accessed 1,331 times. This page was last modified 01:37, 5 September 2008.