Chapter 3 The Tariscope program

3.6 Reports

The Tariscope user has two ways to create reports in Tariscope:

1. 1. You can print or export data of any Tariscope view or create diagrams. Hereafter, we will call such reports as "simple reports". You can create a simple report using data from:
   • views for calls,
   • views for IP traffic,
   • view for services,
   • table of subscribers,
   • table of rates,
   • and others.
   You can create diagrams only for views for calls, services, and IP traffic. A generation of simple reports is executed by an initialization of the following modes: printing, creation of diagrams or data export. Prior to creating such reports, the user can filter out the necessary data, perform sorting by several criteria, perform grouping data for specific fields of the view. Creating such reports is considered in Section 3.5.
2. 2. You can use a report form. A generation of reports can be initiated manually by the user or formed automatically on a predetermined schedule using the Tariscope Tasks mode. The Tariscope system includes about 100 report forms. Supports the report forms that are created in Tariscope using the Report Designer program or created by using the Microsoft Report Builder program. The Tariscope user can edit any report form or create your own report form.

The use of report forms allows you to build almost any desired report in tabular or graphical form on any data contained in the Tariscope database. These report forms are based on SQL queries to the database. They can contain scripts for an additional data processing and support formatting output. The report forms allow you to insert graphics such as your company logo, signature, etc.

To generate reports, you can use the following ways:

• in the menu of the Tariscope program, select: Data → New report;
• If you are the user of the Tariscope Provider edition, select in the menu: Tool → Subscriber accounting. In the appeared Account view, select a desired customer (subscriber), and click on the New report icon on the toolbar;
• in the Tariscope menu, select Tools → Tariscope management. In the appeared All configuration pages, click on the Tariscope Tasks in the configuration tree. On the Tariscope Tasks page, click on the Configure link, and add a task to generate a report. On this page you can configure a schedule and other parameters of the report, which will be generated automatically at a specific time. Tariscope can automatically send a report by email. See the description of the page configuration in “Tariscope 4.x. Administrator’s guide”.

The report forms are grouped. A group name corresponds to the folder name where files with the report forms are stored. The Tariscope user depending on the format of the report form can edit any report form or create a new report form. The Report Designer program or Microsoft Report Builder can be used for this purpose.

To create a report on calls, open a view for calls. If necessary, specify filter conditions. Select Data → New report or the corresponding icon on the toolbar. The Choose report window appears as shown in Figure 3.6.1.

Figure 3.6.1

This window has the following partitions:

• Reports,
• Available reports,
• Period,
• Filter,
• Search,
• Type,
• Variables,
• Information.

The Reports partition contains a list of groups with report forms. The Recent group contains 20 last reports which were generated by the user regardless of to which group these forms are belonged. A choice of a group in this partition leads to the display of a list of report forms included in the group in the Available reports partition. If you select the All reports group, a report tree is displayed in the Available report partition. This example is shown in Figure 3.6.1.

The Search partition located on the right from the Available reports name allows you to quickly search a desired report form by its name or part of its name. An example of the search of ‘categories’ is shown in Figure 3.6.2.

Figure 3.6.2

If the All reports group was selected in the Reports partition, the Available reports partition displays report forms of all groups in a form of tree. To open a specific group of report forms in the Available reports partition, click on the plus symbol located on the left of a group name. Then, select a desired report.

If you have selected a report form, the Information partition displays the report data that contain the following information: a report name, description, author, creation date, and screenshot. An example on such information is shown in Figure 3.6.3. If you click on the screenshot, it will be zoomed in.

Figure 3.6.3

The Period list allows you to set a time period which will applied to select data of the report. The options include:

• No filter (by default). All data on a view will be used for the report.
• Month. Leads to opening the Year and Month lists that allows you to select a desired month.
• Year. Leads to opening the Year list that allows you to select a desired year.
• Custom period. Leads to opening the From and To calendar boxes that allow you to select a desired period.

The Filter list allows specifying filter conditions from a previously saved filters. The default value is Active view filter. It means that for the report will be used the data, which are displayed in the current view. If you need periodically create a report, for example, for different groups of subscribers, we recommend you to create and save appropriate filters. And when you need a specific report, you should only select a name of the corresponding filter in this window.

The Variables partition is displayed only in case when variables are used in the reports. The partition displays a list of variables used in such report and allows specifying particular values for them. An example of the Choose report window for report form with variables is shown in Figure 3.6.3. This partition located in the bottom of the window is a table containing the following columns:

• Variable. Displays a variable name.
• Data type. Displays a variable type.
• Value. Allows you to specify a value of the variable.
• Description. Displays a variable description.

To set a value of a specific variable, click in the appropriate cell of the Value column. Depending on the variable type, you can enter the data into the cell or additional window that opens where you can select a desired value.

After you specify all required data, click OK. As a result, a new view with name as the report title will be opened in the Tariscope program. The view displays the report. An example of such view is shown in Figure 3.6.4.

Figure 3.6.4

A report view contains a menu that appears when you right-click on the view. There are the following items in the menu:

• Copy. Allows copying a selected cell of report table.
• Find. A choice of the items leads to appear the Find window (Figure 3.5.9). It allows to specify data you need. A description of the window, see in the Section 3.5.6.
• Print. Allows printing a report.
• Export to Excel. Allows exporting a report to the Excel file.
• Export to PDF. Allows exporting a report to the PDF file.
• Export to HTML. Allows exporting a report to the HTML file.
• Export to text. Allows exporting a report to the text file.

If you have any problems with a report, open the Output view. To do this, in the program menu, select View → Output. The Output window appears where in the Show output from list, select the Report items. Information about results of building the report is displayed in the window. It contains SQL queries, which were performed to generate the report, and errors, if they have appeared. The Tariscope user can edit a report form to avoid the errors. Use the Tariscope Report Designer or Microsoft Report Builder depending on what tool was used to create the report form. If data for the report has been changed or you have changed the report form, click F5 on the keyboard or the Refresh icon on the toolbar to update the report.

A list of report forms that Tariscope includes is shown in Table 3.9.

Table 3.9

If you wish that Tariscope automatically generate reports by schedule, use the Tariscope Tasks configuration page from the Tariscope Management mode. A description of the configuration page, see in the “Tariscope 4.x. Administrator’s guide”.

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