Report types

Shows an attachment that is stored in an O&R provider. Use when you have a static attachment that you want to associate with a page.

Advantages:

• Can be associated with specific pages

Disadvantages:

• Not a true reporting solution
• Only supports static attachments in an O&R provider

See Configuring an attachment report.

For information about attachments, see Administrator > System Administration > Attachments in the Infor Operations and Regulations User and Administration Library.

Birst is Infor's business intelligence and analytics platform. Use when you need an analytic report in a multi-tenant environment.

Supports advanced analytics, data blending, and self-service BI with intuitive, web-based design tools.

Advantages:

• Does not require SQL knowledge
• Can report directly out to O&R with live data access
• Can use data from within Data Lake and combine data from multiple products
• Can report out of Data Lake
• Excellent analytics and graphs
• Strong Birst Community support
• Follows the Kimball methodology for dimensional modeling, which helps make the tool easier to understand if you are a seasoned dimensional modeler

Disadvantages:

• Not suited for operational reports
• Requires an understanding of data models and how to create them
• Pixel-perfect reporting is challenging
• Lack of industry training material
• Slow to navigate
• Creating your own models is difficult to figure out for the first time, requires a bit of training

See Configuring a Birst report.

For information about Birst, see "Analytics for Birst" in the Infor Operations and Regulations Installation and Technical Reference Library.

Use when you have a static file you want to associate with a page.

Advantages:

• Can be associated with specific pages

Disadvantages:

• Not a true reporting solution
• Only supports static files from the file system

See Configuring a file system report.

Creates a report based on a VB.NET formula that returns a stream. The formula is processed through the Batch Manager. Use when you want to implement your own reporting engine.

Advantages:

• Can aggregate data that is not possible with other reporting types
• Can be used within Map Drawer to generate reports based on spatial data

Disadvantages:

• Requires a high degree of technical knowledge of VB.NET
• No out-of-the-box examples for common engines

See Configuring a formula report.

Shows a simple single-field report from Infor Document Management. Use when you need a report that is based on a single table.

Template-based, user-friendly

Advanced: Specialized document generation features

Advantages:

• Uses Microsoft Word as the report designer
• Uses industry standard XPath to extract data from the data source
• Integrated with Infor Document Management, which allows templates and outputs to be integrated
• Supports dynamic parameters
• Can be associated with specific pages
• Based on O&R business object names
• Supports different output types, such as PDF and MS Word

Disadvantages:

• Each report has one source table with other tables traversed through inner joins if they have foreign key relationships.
• Complex relationships or queries must use staging tables populated through formula workflows
• Requires a Microsoft addon to design
• Requires XPath knowledge for complex aggregation or complex reports
• Cannot embed maps

See Configuring an IDM document output report.

Infor Reporting is Infor's implementation of Cognos Analytics. Use when you need an operational report within a multi-tenant environment and can work within the limits

Reports are designed using tables and positioning

Advanced: Advanced enterprise reporting features

Advantages:

• Full fledged reporting solution that is well documented and hardened in the Industry

Disadvantages:

• Cannot be used to export large amounts of data
• 50,000 row limit on queries
• Does not have data models, therefore requires a high degree of knowledge of SQL and the O&R database schema
• Excel reports might not be the same as their PDF counterparts. Excel output is not preferred.
• There is a 15 min report timeout
• When writing reports, attention needs to be paid to the amount of memory being used, as it could impact users
• Limited font choices
• Getting pixel-perfect reports is difficult due to how you format each report
• Images have to be exposed to the public for PDFs

See Configuring an Infor Reporting report.

Keyword reports are generated by the data export engine based on keywords that you define in the Keyword Manager.

See Configuring a keyword report.

For information about keywords, see "Correspondence" in the Infor Operations and Regulations User and Administration Library.

Calls any URL with dynamic parameters. A new window is opened to show the specified URL.

Advantages:

• Calls any URL with dynamic parameters
• Works across environment types

Disadvantages:

• A limited number of parameters can be passed through the URL
• There is no access to any Infor data.
• In a multi-tenant environment, the target server must be in the DMZ
• URLs are hard-coded, requiring changes to the configuration if the URL needs to change

See Configuring a URL report.