Generate and Schedule Reports

You can use reports to better understand your current inventory, resource utilization and performance, cloud spend, and more.

Generate reports

You can generate reports to gain valuable insights on your virtual infrastructure and services.

A generated report can always be viewed by its owner (that is, the user who generates the report), as well as Admin Portal users with the role of Superuser. However, if you want to allow other users to view a report that you generate, you must explicitly share the report with them. For information on who can view a report and how to share it, see View Generated Reports.

Before you generate a report, make sure that you allow pop-ups in your browser.

• Some reports, like the AWS Reserved Instance Coverage Report, the AWS Reserved Instance Recommendations Report, and the AWS Reserved Instance Utilization Report are run by retrieving data from the AWS Cost Explorer at a small cost. See details of these costs in the report descriptions.
• Cost values for saved reports will be saved in your preferred currency. If you change your currency preference, cost values for pre-existing saved reports will be updated to the new currency preference.

1. From the Reports menu, select a report.
2. If required, and if available, select a reporting period.

   See Time Range Filters for details on each option in the By Period menu.

3. If required, and if available, click to select a location to identify the part of the virtualized infrastructure to report on, then click OK.
4. If required, and if available, in the Report Generator section, select a custom attribute from the Group By menu.
5. Enter any information you want to record in the Comment field.
6. To generate the report using filters, click Add Advanced Filters and select from the available menus.
7. Click Generate.
8. To view the report, select it from the Generated Reports list, and click View.

Delete reports

You can remove reports that are no longer useful from the system.

• To delete a report, select the report from the list, and click Delete.

Export Reports

You can export generated reports in either a PDF or CSV format.

For large reports, especially after historical events have been retrieved, not all information may be included in the report. Exporting the results to a CSV will allow you to see all information at a glance.

To export a report as a PDF:

1. Right-click a listed report and select Export PDF.
2. Enable Attach Report as PDF when scheduling a report task.

To export a report as a CSV:

1. Right-click a listed report and select Export CSV.
2. Enable Attach report as CSV when scheduling a report task.

View Generated Reports

If you generate a report, you are its owner, and you'll always be able to view it from the Generated Reports page in the Admin Portal. Admin Portal users with the role of Superuser can also always view all generated reports.

Other Admin Portals with roles less powerful than Superuser can also view a report if the report owner or an Admin Portal user with a role of Superuser shares it with them.

For information on Admin Portal roles, see Commander Roles and Permissions.

• Select a generated report from the list and click View.

Share reports

A report owner can share their reports with other Admin Portal users. A report owner can also choose to stop sharing a report with a user.

Admin Portal users with the role of Superuser can also allow or disallow the sharing of any reports with other Admin Portal users.

1. Select a report from the Generated Reports list and click Share.
2. In the Share Report dialog, select who you want to share the report with:
• No One — No one other than the report owner or users with Superuser or Enterprise Admin roles can view the report.
• Everyone — All Admin Portal and Service Portal users can view the report.

  If you share the report with everyone, in the Service Portal, users will see the report as a Published Report.

• Specific Users — Select the Admin Portal users that may view the report.
3. Click OK.

Require user authentication to view linked reports

To further secure who can view saved reports, you can enable the requireAuthOnReports system property. When this property is enabled, Admin Portal and Service Portal users can't directly access the scheduled reports through the links provided in report notification emails (see Schedule saved searches or Generate scheduled reports). They must first authenticate, and then only Admin Portal and Service Portal users with valid user accounts and sufficient roles and permissions can view the reports.

• For the Admin Portal, the users that can view the report are:
  • The report owner.
  • Those with Super User or Enterprise Admin roles.
  • Any user that the owner or a Superuser shared the report with.
• For the Service Portal, all users must be assigned the Show Search & Reports permission and either be the report owner or belong to the same organization as the report owner.

Using user authentication for reports can be helpful, for example, when you use a large email list for your scheduled report notifications — some users may receive links to reports that you don't want them to view. However, if report authentication is enabled, users must already be logged into the Admin Portal or Service Portal, or they'll be prompted to provide their Admin Portal or Service Portal username and password. If the users are authenticated, they'll only be able view those reports that they're authorized for.

To require user authentication for searches and reports, you must set the requireAuthOnReports system property to true. This system property is set globally for a Commander instance. For information, see Advanced Configuration With System Properties.

Use report templates

If you're going to generate one or more reports on a regular basis, you can create a report template. A report template will retain the parameters that you want to continue to use so you won't have re-enter the parameters for the report.

This allows you to quickly create a report with no change or minimum change to the report template.

After you've created a report template, you can select it as many times as you want to generate the report, and you can schedule it to run automatically on the day and time of your choosing.

Report templates can also be renamed. The user that creates a report template can rename it, but only users with the Commander role of superuser can rename all report templates.

Create report templates

1. Generate a report with the parameters that you want to re-use and select it from the list.
2. Click Save Template.
3. In the Save Template dialog, enter a name for the report template.
4. Click OK.

   The name of the template you entered appears in the Template Name column for the report you selected.

   If the Template Name column isn't displayed, right-click in the list, select Pick Columns, and add the column name to the list of shown columns.

Generate reports from templates

1. On the Report Templates page, from the list of all report templates that have been generated by you or other users, select a template.

   When you select a listed report template, the configuration of the report is displayed on the right showing you any available details about the filters that will be used to create the report.

2. Click Generate.
3. In the Generate Report dialog, enter an optional comment.
4. Click OK.
5. To view the report you generated from the template, select it from the list of reports in the Reports menu.

Delete report templates

Report templates that are no longer useful can be deleted from the system.

Only the creator of a report template or a user with the Commander role of Superuser can delete report templates.

• To delete a report template, on the Report Templates page, select the template, and click Delete.

Generate scheduled reports

You can generate and email reports on a set schedule.

• Cost values for scheduled reports will be saved in your preferred currency. If you change your currency preference, scheduled reports will continue to display the currency they were originally configured in.
• Cloud Billing reports that were scheduled before upgrading to version 8.7 won't have parameters set for multicurrency, so after upgrading, the currency settings will default to USD.

1. Select a generated report and click Schedule.

   If a template wasn't already saved for this report, the Configure Scheduled Task dialog appears.

2. In the Save Report Template page, enter a name for the report template, then click Next.

   You can access the template later under Tools > Report Templates.

3. On the Notification page, do the following, then click Next:
• Select a report template from Report Template.
• TO and CC — At least one email address is required. Separate multiple email addresses with semicolons.
• Body — The body of the email can contain no more than 1024 characters.
• Send when no results found — Select to send an email even if the search returns no results.
• Include link to report — Select to include a link to the report in the email.

  By default, the link included in the email provides Admin Portal users with direct access to a generated report. However, if user authentication for reports is enabled, Admin Portal users must provide their user name and password to authenticate, and if they have valid user accounts and sufficient roles, they may view the reports. For more information, see Require user authentication to view linked reports.

• Embed HTML report — Select to include the search results themselves. If you enable this option, you can also specify whether to include the search parameters in the email.
• Attach report as PDF — Select to attach a PDF version of the search results to the email.
• Attach report as CSV — Select to attach a CSV version of the search results to the email.

Scheduling must be enabled to configure notifications.

4. On the Scheduling page, do the following, then click Next:
• To use scheduling, select Enabled.
  You can edit the scheduled task at any time to enable or disable it.
• To schedule the frequency and the time for the task, select when you want the task to occur: daily, weekly, monthly, or on weekdays. You can also specify that the task be performed only once so that the task will be removed from the Scheduled Tasks list after it is run.
• If you selected a weekly or monthly frequency, select the day of the week or month.

  If you select 31 for Day of Month for a monthly frequency, Commander automatically adjusts the day to reflect the last day of any given month. The same adjustment is made if you select 29 or 30 for February.

5. On the Summary page, review the details and click Finish.

   The scheduled task appears in the list of scheduled tasks.