Reporting Best Practices
Reporting is one of BarometerIT's most popular and powerful features, but it can be challenging to use. I hope that this article will help provide some guidance to get the most out of your reports and avoid some common pitfalls.
Limit the amount of data in a single report
If it's possible it can be helpful to reduce the number of results in a single report. Sometimes this can be done by refining you query to narrow the results further. Most times you'll probably need to be a little more creative and try to split the report in to multiple reports.
For example if you're try to identify systems that are missing a custom field then you could look to split the report for Active systems vs Inactive system based on lifecycle state. In the settings menu for your report there is a Copy Report option that can be helpful to split your results into multiple reports.
Reduce the number of columns
When trying to export reports one of the most time consuming parts of the process is pulling extra data to populate columns. Custom fields and associations both add extra time to the export per column per row, so for report performance it's important to try and limit these types of columns.
We have some optimizations in place to try and lessen the impact of these columns, but because of the level of customization we allow in reports it's difficult to reduce processing time without impacting the user's options.
Remove "Group By"
The Group by option is great for displaying data in the way you need it, but it can cause huge slow down when trying to export your reports. This is a known issue and we're looking into optimizations to lessen the impact, but currently the best option for exports is to unselect this option.
Hopefully by using some of these tips you'll be able to get more out of your reports in BarometerIT. If you're still having trouble getting your report results or exports please don't hesitate to contact us at support@barometerit.com.