Reports UIv4 now available!

I just received access to the Reports beta today, I’ve been so eager to get updates to reports so I jumped right in and wanted to share my initial observations.

Reports slows down a lot more quickly than say the Resources UIv4. It slows down after interacting with any of the elements on the screen to the point it comes to a screeching halt and nothing on the the screen can be clicked on. If I switch tabs and do something else for a little bit, it seems to become responsive again, at least for a little while. I sent a HAR file in with a new ticket on this already

I worked with making an interface bandwidth report and found some challenges there.

I am overjoyed to see I can search by the description of the interface now! That is supremely important to me. However, what doesn’t make sense is why I’m still required to put in the instance name. I need to be able to use the description because I don’t have individual port numbers memorized, I have to go to the resource in another tab and look up the interface to get this information. The results for this column are also not showing the full names, if I click on one of these, it only fills in what is shown:

I can copy and paste the actual name and it takes just fine. It does run the report as expected

For viewing past reports: there is now the option to see all recently run reports if you select the “All Reports” option at the top of the left-hand nav. You can filter the table via the search bar to find various report types or you can use the column headers to sort.

That’s great, but it doesn’t help. I can’t explain it without showing you and this public forum is not a good place for me to post screenshots of my reports/structure.

You have the report tree. Why not just put each instance of the history under its report under the tree? Just make each instance of the report a child on the tree and when i click on it i get an info tab where i can manage the instance and a preview tab where i can get a preview of the data? HTML/PDF would be easy. CSV would be almost as easy.

This would also make it clearer when clicking the play button what is actually happening. The play button doesn’t rerun a specific instance of the report (which is the indication it currently gives), but runs the parent report, generating a new instance of the report data.

Yeah, there’s some inconsistency with UI design trying to match the old conceptual models, but hamstringing itself at the same time. Report groups is the same way. There’s no reason the history needs to be its own tab. Just make each history item a child of the report in the report tree. Then instead of putting the “manage report” dialog squirreled away under a gear, just make that what shows up when you click on the parent report. Give me pencils on the fields i can edit and you can even combine the “manage” with the “info” and make it so much cleaner.

Willing to walk anyone through who wants to see what I’m talking about.

Thanks for the feedback!
 

I’ve gone ahead and create some tickets for our development teams to track the issues for the following issues:

1. Inline Help showing too frequently 
2. Users not being able to properly see report information
3. Toast messages not auto clearing
4. Reports not displaying in the left-hand bar when a new one is created

For the custom columns: if you click on the table settings in the bottom panel of the Alerts report (the “Alerts Report Preview” section), you can add custom columns there. It’s a similar workflow for adding custom columns on the alerts page itself.

For viewing past reports: there is now the option to see all recently run reports if you select the “All Reports” option at the top of the left-hand nav. You can filter the table via the search bar to find various report types or you can use the column headers to sort.

Just a few quick observations I have seen so far.

• Inline help appears every time I click the left or right arrow to show more report types.
• Selecting a filter causes the inline help to auto appear.
• Users with no settings access still get Portal report types listed. This will cause possible issues with clients. They can create the reports, but due to access they can’t load any info.
• The bottom toast bar doesn’t auto clear, so I can create a report, run it, delete it. Then I have to clear each toast for each action.
• Creating a report then running it, doesn’t auto refresh the left bar where the report should be listed.
• Custom columns are not available in the Alerts report. This is needed so we can get back the externalticketid since customColumns have been broken in the API calls for a while now.

Something i’ve found frustrating: You used to be able to do table view, then expand each report to view the history. now you have to click into each one and switch tabs to view the history. This is frustrating because i used to be able to peruse through the histories of multiple reports without much work. It requires several more clicks per report. 

I also can’t see, without clicking into each report, the number of generated reports like i could in UIv3. Please bring this back.

Seeing an issue sporadically where when a report is run no output (regardless of CVS, PDF, or HTML) is provided, but if I go to the history tab of the report it shows that it just ran and the link there loads the report just fine.

Aside from that issue, the refreshed UI on the reports page so far seems to be an improvement.

It’s nice to see the Reports tab joining the club!

I know that the ReportsGroup model doesn’t support parent group id (nested folders), but with the new UI looking so nice, this is now desperate for a fix.

So… “Nested Report Groups please!”

Other models that deserve group nesting:

• CollectorGroup
• NetscanGroup
• Settings/Integrations (doesn’t even have groups
• (…probably quite a few more)

Other than that, I’m not a huge user of reports, but the UI looks nice and clean from what I can see.

The history(ies) of a report should just be children under the report in the group tree.

Also, when viewing the history, i was unable to right click and “copy link” from the URL to the data. I had to select the data, then copy it. This is because the anchor tag doesn’t actually have an href attribute. Why LM decided to throw away basic HTML capability is beyond me. Please bring it back. Without an href attribute, i also lose control of alternate methods of opening the link (like wheel clicking to open in a new tab, which i get is the default). Not having href tags also interferes with several screen readers out there by deviating from the way hyperlinks are supposed to be done on the internet.

I was unable to add a property to a resource inventory report because the property hadn’t been discovered yet by the new PS. This is broken since it works just fine in UIv3. The advantage is that i can update the PS to create the new property and immediately go to the report and make the configuration change. I don’t have to wait for any active discovery to finish.