Understanding Reporting

Civic Platform provides a reporting function that interfaces with the following third party reporting engines:

  • Accela Report Writer

  • Crystal Reports

  • Microsoft Reporting

  • Oracle Reports.

You use the Civic Platform Report Manager to set up the reporting tools, and to categorize, configure and maintain reports. Report setup options include setting report parameters to send to the integrated report server, assigning permissions, attaching reports to portlets, and associating reports with workflow tasks.

When executing reports, Civic Platform sends the report request, with report parameters, to the integrated report server. The report server connects to the Civic Platform database, composes the report, and delivers the request back to Civic Platform in a pre-defined format.

Accela-hosted sites do not need to set up and configure integrated report servers. On-premise sites require configuration and setup of integrated report servers (see Civic Platform On-premise Administrator Supplement).

The integrated report servers store all reports, accessed by Report Manager, in a specified directory. Permissions on these directories enforce report security. You can also save reports to an integrated Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS).

Users can view reports, from different report servers, in the same portlet or from the same menu. Multiple agencies can use the same reporting service, from different environments, as long as you have network access to the report services and report directories.

You can configure a report to use client-side executables (.EXE) from a user’s workstation. For example, you can define a Microsoft Excel file with variables that launch a report within Civic Platform. The Client_EXE report service option is only compatible with Microsoft Work (.doc) and Microsoft Excel (.xls).

Each reporting service provides options to present reports in different formats including Adobe Acrobat (.PDF), Microsoft Word (.doc), and Microsoft Excel (.xls). For example, Crystal Reports provides Adobe Acrobat (PDF), MS Word (.doc), MS Excel (.xls), Rich Text Format (.rtf) and Comma-Delimited (CSV) output formatting options. You use Report Manager to specify the format for a particular report service.