Return to IS Home Page.
 
...      ...  ...

 

 

Working with Pre-Defined Reports (PDR)

Overview

Working with Pre-Defined Reports (PDR) 

Distribution

ODS Specialist

ODS Specialist-Limited

ODS Specialist-Restricted

Ownership

The Administrator Operational Data Store (ODS) is responsible for ensuring that this document is necessary, that it reflects actual practice, and that it supports University policy.

Overview

There are three types of reports used with the Integrated System:

Oracle's Discoverer is the only application that will open Pre-Defined (PDR) reports.  It must also be used to create User-Defined (UDR) reports or modify Pre-Defined reports to your needs. Users with or without access to Oracle applications may use Discoverer to open the PDR or the UDR.  It is not necessary to run Oracle's financial applications for access to PDR or UDR.

The information you see in Pre-Defined or User-Defined Reports comes from a copy of the Production database called an Operational Data Store (ODS). ODS data is refreshed once a day, and will be at least 24 hours old in most cases. 

You must have Discoverer installed on your PC to open and run PDR.  Your Local Support Partners (LSP) will have copies of the Discoverer CD and will install it for you.  If your department does not have a LSP call the ITC Help Desk (924-3731) for instructions on getting Discoverer installed.

Refer to Integrated System homepage http://www.virginia.edu/integratedsystem/ and select the Reports link for information on gaining access to the ODS.

Use the link, Getting Started  http://www.virginia.edu/integratedsystem/gettingStarted/index.html to find out how to request access to the ODS.

All users of Oracle Applications or Discoverer must establish a valid password with the first login procedure detailed below

Note: You only need to follow these steps one time. If you have already changed your default password for Oracle Application access, it will not be necessary to do it again for Discoverer access until it expires.  Oracle passwords expire in 45 days.

Note: Discoverer reports run on the ODS which is a copy of the Production database.  Once you establish or change a password in Production, it will take one day for the changes to be migrated to the ODS via the refresh process. 

First Login

Open a browser and go to the Integrated System's Application Launcher to initiate your first login. 

Troublesome Password Characters

When you create the new password do not include the @ or $ characters. Either of them causes Discoverer logins to fail.

You will not get an error message from Oracle if you use these characters when you change your password.  This is because the other Oracle applications will accept them in a password. Discoverer is the only Oracle application that fails to login when passwords contain these characters.

Your password access to the ODS is based on the applications security implemented in the other Oracle applications.  This allows users of other Oracle applications to login either to the ODS or the Oracle applications with the same user name and password.

MODULE ABBREVIATIONS

AP = Accounts Payable

AR = Accounts Receivable

FM = Funds Management

GL = General Ledger

HR = Human Resources

IN = Inventory

OE = Order Entry

PO = Purchase Order

CM = Cash Management

PY = Payroll

Reports

Pre-Defined Reports have been created by Integrated System developers and can be identified by their naming convention. The Report names begin with the characters IS, a period, two characters identifying the module most of the information comes from, then an underscore followed by the report's title.

Reports that begin with other characters are User-Defined Reports, created by an experienced Discoverer user, and shared with others. The first 4-5 characters of the report's name are the university computing ID of the creator, a period, and the report's title.

In the next several pages you will find step-by-step instructions with screen shots of the steps for:

Refer to:

Exporting to Excel

Discoverer offers a work environment that permits manipulation and formatting of the data in your Pre-Defined Report. For example, column and row headings can be moved from one axis to the other to achieve views of the data that might not be duplicated in Excel.

However, many users may need to share the data in Pre-Defined reports with others who do not have access to the ODS or Discoverer.  Also, many formatting, graphing, and sorting tasks are done more effectively in Excel, as are several types of complex calculations.  Discoverer 3.1 provides functionality for exporting all or parts of the Pre-Defined Report to Microsoft Excel.

When you export a Pre-Defined Report to Excel you will lose Discoverer's formatting (colors, fonts, graphics) and its Page Item Detail features (i.e. the ability to drag and drop column/row headings to other axes).  Essentially, whatever data is on your screen at the time of export will be included in the target file.

If you know you need to export data to Excel it's probably best to run the Pre-Defined report, export its data without formatting, sorting, or totaling then use Excel's equivalent features to complete the report.

Scheduling a Report with Discoverer 4

Users of the Operational Data Store may need to schedule one or several reports to run at another time.  Typically, this is done when:

Discoverer provides a tool for scheduling reports for execution at a later time.

IMPORTANT: You must have scheduling privileges to use Discoverer's scheduling feature.  You must request scheduling privileges from the ODS Administrator (odsadmin@virginia.edu)

Once you have scheduled a report, you are the only person who can view the query and its results.  To share the results of a scheduled report requires saving them or exporting them to another application.

This lesson covered the following topics: