Reporting Services overview

Reporting Services, a component of the Infor BI for Lawson suite, is a reporting repository and web distribution engine designed for secure storage and report delivery. Coupled with Crystal Report Designer it allows for creation of presentation quality operational reports. Reporting Services reduces system load due to the reduced number of reports that need to be processed. The full-use product enables enterprise-wide reporting against any data from any source, including non-Lawson sources.

Reporting Services accepts data from suitably connected data sources. Data can be imported from a connected compatible database using a Crystal report or from the Lawson back office through an FTP connection.

Individual reports are published to a report repository. By using the functionality of Reporting Services, you can determine who receives the report, what parts of the report they receive, as well as how and when they receive it.

Reporting Services functionality is distributed over these four abstract blocks. For simplification, the remainder of this chapter treats each block as a separate entity.

For more information see the following sections:

• Report security
• Report bursting and filtering
• Report scheduling
• Report output options