Reporting Module: Database-Driven Delivery

4 min video  /  4 minute read
 

The Reporting Module is a standalone reporting solution for quickly and easily creating data-rich, dynamic PDF reports. With a powerful drag-and-drop query interface and robust visualization components for pixel-perfect layouts, the Reporting Module lets you get data to the people who need it — set a schedule or leverage built-in scripting functions to create event-triggered executions, then have the finished reports distributed automatically. Download your free trial of Ignition to try out the Reporting Module.

Transcript:

00:06
Travis Cox:
The Reporting Module is a standalone reporting solution that allows you to quickly and easily create rich, dynamic PDF reports. The module comes with powerful capabilities to quickly create many common types reports, such as compliance, inventory tracking, production management, efficiency monitoring, downtime tracking, SBC, QA, OEE management, historical data analysis, and much more. The Reporting Module adds the ability to create reports in the Ignition designer that can be generated on the fly or on a schedule. The Reporting Module also adds components to both Vision and Perspective. Design your reports easily inside Ignition's designer application. The interface is so user-friendly because enables you to design reports with the same intuitive feel and rapid application development tools that you get when designing applications and Ignition, leveraging drag and drop. The interface walks you through defining your data, design the report, to a preview to see what the report will look like prior to deployment. The Reporting Module makes it easy to define the data behind the reports.

01:06
Travis Cox:
You can specify any number of report parameters and data sources in your reports. Report parameters allow user to input data to be used within the report, such as the date range for gathering information or selecting a particular production line they want to see on the report. Data sources are the primary means of getting data into your report. You can get data from multiple sources. SQL query to build dynamic SQL queries that run against your database. Name queries, who is a pre-configured query defined in Ignition. Tag Historian query to query historical data; Tag Calculation query perform calculations on historical data such as min, max, average standard deviation, and much more. Alarm Journal query to query alarm history, Static CSV to test out specific data to report, and scripts to leverage Ignition Python scripting environment to create a data source anyway you want by leveraging Ignition's built-in system functions. The Reporting Module has a powerful drag-and-drop query interface that allows you to build complex SQL queries easily. The new query structure allows you to create complex nesting, which can correlate relational data and process historian data in a seamless fashion. You can then leverage table grouping to display metadata in unique ways for things like summary information or drill-down charts.

02:22
Travis Cox:
The Reporting Module comes with a rich set of report components to visualize data. These components are separate from Vision or Perspective and are specifically designed for PDF reports. This includes simple components such as text, images, lines, and shapes, to a more complex components such as tables, cross tabs, bar codes, time shares chart, XY chart, bar chart, and pie chart. The Reporting Module provide several components that can be used within the Vision Module. The Report Viewer Component allows a reports be viewed directly from the client. The Row Selector and Column Selector components let clients manipulate data sets graphically. Where the File Explorer and PDF File Viewer components allow clients to access files outside of Ignition. For Perspective, the module provides Report Viewer Component to embed and view reports directly from a Perspective session. You can directly interact with report by passing a data, performing pagination, and save the report as a PDF.

03:17
Travis Cox:
The Reporting Module allows you to schedule reports within Ignition gateway. You can schedule a report to run on a regular basis; for example, every Monday at 5:00 PM, then your report will run a schedule whether or not any Ignition clients are open. In fact, the Reporting Module can be stand-alone and does not require Vision or Perspective. You also have the option to set up a triggered execution, which means the reports can run on-demand when triggered by an event, such as a tag changed, a shift change, or the finish of a production run, all through the built-in scripting functions to execute and distribute the report. Schedule reports can automatically be delivered in many ways, print to a printer, connect it to the Ignition server, send out an email with a report attachment, save the report to a file server, upload to an FTP server, or your scripting functions to customize a method of delivery. Have your reports distributed in the way that you want, every time, automatically. You can save your reports in many formats: PDF, HTML, CSV, Excel and XLS, RTF, J pegs, P&G, and XML file formats. To try out the Reporting Module, download your free trial of Ignition today.

Posted on July 15, 2024